[4suite-dev] Hosting 4Suite

[Uche Ogbuji]

The hosting arrangement for 4Suite hasn't changed in ages.  I took over
responsibility for 4Suite when I started at Zepheira, but it's been on a
server in my basement, and I have not had time to administer it
properly, and the project deserves better.

This morning on #4Suite IRC we discussed the options, and we want to
open up discussion to the community.

Bottom line: What the project needs is well-administered:

* Version control
* Wiki
* FTP
* Mailing lists
* Issue trackers
* Basic Web

It doesn't have to be all or nothing.  We could move VCS (the creakiest
bit, at the moment) and gradually migrate the rest.  We could keep using
SF for issue tracking.

Re: VCS, I agree it's time to move on from CVS, but I've tried to like
Subversion, and I've failed.  I like mercurial better, having just
played with it.  But is there any resisting the SVN juggernaut?  I
thought of leaving things as CVS when we move, and giving a bit more
time for the VCS wars to rage.  After all because everything imports
from CVS.  But maybe I'm just crazy :-)

Re: Mailing lists, I like Mailman as at present, and that's been
working, except that I think the burden on admins is more than it could
be.  Better anti-spam tools would be nice.

Re: Web, it's time to move to a static core 4Suite.org Web site.  We can
re-enable dynamic features strategically in bits, but the whole sit
right now is unnecessarily dynamic, and

Some ideas that came up on IRC:

* Forget the all-in-one-FOSS hosting farms and just get a
Python-friendly host such as WebFaction
* Google code
* BerliOS <http://www.berlios.de/>
* OpenSolaris <http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/tools/scm/>

I think we all agree SourceForge is just too flaky.

Anyway this post is to solicit more ideas, and even better, volunteers
to take on bits of the needed work.  As with the manual project, many
hands could make this quick work.

-- 
Uche Ogbuji                       http://uche.ogbuji.net
Founding Partner, Zepheira        http://zepheira.com
Linked-in profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ucheogbuji
Articles: http://uche.ogbuji.net/tech/publications/