[OpenLayers-Dev] RFC: Migrating OpenLayers SVN + Trac to OSGeo infrastructure

Cameron Shorter cameron.shorter at gmail.com
Sun Jan 13 17:08:45 EST 2008


+1
This is a positive long term move.
It should ease the integration between projects they are sharing the 
same hosting resources and share the workload.

Paul Spencer wrote:
> Chris,
>
> I think this is a good move to make for the project, and for OSGeo as  
> well.
>
> I don't have any particular feeling about the structure of URLs and  
> would be fine with either structure.
>
> While I'm not involved personally in SAC, I would like to help and I  
> can ask Shawn Barnes to help out with any migration support that you  
> need.
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul
>
> On 13-Jan-08, at 7:03 AM, Christopher Schmidt wrote:
>
>   
>> OpenLayers is currently (graciously) hosted by MetaCarta. This has
>> worked out quite well so far, but using MetaCarta hosting has meant
>> we've had to 'roll our own' system for authentication -- and as many
>> people know, this particular system is rather hacky: an email to the  
>> PSC
>> list to generate a new username, which requires manual intervention.
>>
>> Part of the reason that I've never improved upon this system is that
>> I've always felt that it would be better to invest in moving to OSGeo
>> infrastructure. For a while, this was difficult, but recently, OSGeo  
>> has
>> found some solutiosn which make this technically possible.
>>
>> I'd like to suggest that we move to OSGeo infrastructure for hosting
>> Trac and the Wiki as soon as possible. I'm less sure on the website  
>> and
>> mailing lists.
>>
>> Benefits of moving svn + wiki:
>> * Users can create their own userid -- or use their existing osgeo
>>   userid -- to login to either.
>> * Users creating tickets in trac will automatically get email  
>> notification
>>   on updates of their tickets.
>> * It will be possible to register oneself as a "CC" on a bug without
>>   exposing an email address to the public web.
>> * Shared administrative resources with OSGeo -- which means that it's
>>   not just me who can update the server, but instead the set of people
>>   who maintain the OSGeo servers
>> * Shared OSGeo backup infrastructure. Currently, we're backing up
>>   OpenLayers internally to MetaCarta, and exporting data to OSGeo:
>>   moving to OSGeo infrastructure allows for the bcakups to be
>>   maintained by the foundation.
>>
>> The strongest one to me is that users will be able to create their own
>> accounts via an automated process - no humans involved. I think this  
>> is
>> very important.
>>
>> I have a couple of questions which I don't personally have an answer  
>> to
>> yet:
>>
>> Currently, all OSGeo svn, trac, etc. live under URLs like
>> http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ , http://svn.osgeo.org/gdal/ . I do not  
>> know
>> if it is possible to configure svn.openlayers.org to point directly to
>> the OSGeo server, or if it would be preferred for administrative
>> purposes to have it at svn.osgeo.org/openlayers/ . Obviously, even if
>> it's trivial in an administrative way, it would be more in line with  
>> the
>> rest of the foundation-hosted projects to have the URL be
>> svn.osgeo.org/openlayers/ . Assuming that there is sufficiently good
>> infrastructure setup to allow for users to migrate from one to the
>> other, would it make sense to make the primary OpenLayers SVN URL be  
>> the
>> osgeo.org/ form?
>>
>> Same question applies to trac.
>>
>> I view these aspects of the project as 'internal' -- where SVN lives
>> doesn't matter much, so long as it's correctly linked everywhere --  
>> and
>> would be in support of moving into the osgeo.org namespace for svn and
>> trac, with appropriate redirects.
>>
>> A similar question applies to mailing lists. Currently, these lists  
>> are
>> dev at openlayers.org and users at openlayers.org. Moving to OSGeo
>> infrastructure would probably mean moving these to
>> openlayers-users at lists.osgeo.org and openlayers-dev at lists.osgeo.org  
>> (and
>> openlayers-trac and openlayers-commits.) Would it make sense to move
>> these, with proper redirects to lists.osgeo.org for both the email
>> addresses and the archives?
>>
>> Speaking as (essentially) the sole maintainer of the machine that
>> openlayers.org is hosted on, I'd like to move off whatever we can to
>> OSGeo infrastructure. As you can see here, one important piece of the
>> infrastructure piece is left aside, and that's the sandboxes, website,
>> etc. I think the important aspect of those changes is related to the
>> regular 'svn up' and rebuilding that happens. In the past, we've
>> discovered that doing these in post-commit hooks is bad, because it
>> takes too long to commit (which would be een more true now with the
>> NaturalDocs stuff). However, I think that we can devise a technical
>> solution -- using a post-commit hook to write a revision number, and a
>> cronjob to check whether changes have been made and rebuild if so. I
>> think this would allow us to move to OSGeo infrastructure for the
>> website as well, though there would obviously need to be some  
>> technical
>> discussions for what we could do as far as doc regeneration, etc.  
>> goes.
>>
>> This is not a motion yet: its a request for comments. I'm interested  
>> in
>> moving for a number of reasons, both technical and social. Although
>> there are other people at MetaCarta with 'the keys' to the servers,  
>> I'd
>> like to move that out to the foundation -- and I see that we get a  
>> fair
>> amount of benefit from that. I'm hopeful that others agree, and we can
>> discuss the best way to move forward with the goal of making the  
>> process
>> smooth.
>>
>> Feedback, comments, suggestions, concerns are welcome.
>>
>> (Note that at the moment, I'm not looking for technical advice on the
>> way to set up redirects or anything like that: we can address that  
>> after
>> we address whether, and how, we *want* to move first.)
>>
>> Regards,
>> -- 
>> Christopher Schmidt
>> MetaCarta
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> Dev at openlayers.org
>> http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>>     
>
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Paul Spencer                          pspencer at dmsolutions.ca    |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Chief Technology Officer                                         |
> |DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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