Re: [gpsd-users] Problems with the gpsd website move

[Hamish]

Eric:
> 1) Write a script that will push changes through Savannah's narrow, twisty
> CVS-centered procedure and move the website there.

hey, scripts are what we're good at. :-)

> Advantage: all our stuff would live at a permanent location on Savannah.
> Disadvantage: the damn cron-job delay. I hate the fact that after updates
> I'd have to wait an unknown amount of time for the changes to be visible.

A little automated commit experimentation will let us know the frequency
and time-of-day of the cron jobs (assuming it's stable). The main project
I work on has an hourly cron job to scrape the Svn into the webspace; when
it was a daily cron job it got annoying, but hourly scrape is not so bad,
and the audit trail well is worth the price.

As for CVS, surely the Savannah admins feel the same way about the
technology, and replacing it was a more modern variant has been on their
todo list for yonks. (and so a little prodding could be effective)
I assume the existing state is as it is due to lack of upstream manpower.

> I am so pissed off about the abysmally shitty state of forge technology
> that my next major project is probably going to be building one that
> doesn't suck.

Both of these problems seem overcomeable to me, less work than going into
the project hosting business ourselves, and getting them fixed would help
other fellow projects as well. i.e. it would be a better use of our time
to help improve Savannah than to start something from scratch, then have
to maintain it.


Also it is worth mentioning that the OSGeo Foundation maintains a number
of servers at OSUOSL for hosting a dozen or so projects, and gpsd is not
entirely out of the scope. Email sac at lists.osgeo.org or file a ticket
at http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ under the SAC component for a request.
Preference is of course given to member projects, but it's not like the
gpsd site is high overhead, so we might be able to accommodate something.


> Unrelated note.  This tic you have of ending every sentence with a
> question mark makes it nearly impossible for me to take you seriously.
> I keep hearing a ditzy Valley Girl accent...

Don't blame the teenagers of San Fernando, it's all Socrates's fault.


> > which basically *ALL* references on the web to gpsd point.

As long as the the front page says "moved here" in big blinking letters,
or just quietly redirects after 1 second, I'm not sure why lagging
search engine results matter. This is a long-lived project; the search
results will resolve themselves in time.


regards,
Hamish