AROS68K development methodology and bounties

[Marlon_]

Originally Posted by wXR

...It would be nice if GitHub supported SVN...

It does! Before I learnt how to properly use git, I used svn with my github repositories.

[wXR]

Hoho, just look at all these roadblocks being revealed as a mirage!

[Marlon_]

Originally Posted by wXR

Hoho, just look at all these roadblocks being revealed as a mirage!

https://help.github.com/articles/sup...rsion-clients/

[wawa]

Originally Posted by wXR

Sourceforge is a platform that no developer these days wants to touch with a 10 foot pole.

im not well informed about the matter. but isnt it a bit rude trying to impose your way on people actually working on a project? apparently their opinoin differs from yours, otherwise why would they setup their repo this way?

im also not sure what your links are being supposed to prove and how the situation could be improved simply choosing another versioning system. but im eager to hear an informed explanation.

other than that id say, like strim proposes, if they agree to that, setup another git mirror with the features, you wish for ,enabled. the question is to keep the repos in sync.

id welcome strims contributions very much. radoslaw seems to be a valuable coder. i have though always had an impression that he doesnt value aros very much. hmm?

[wawa]

i think it wouldnt hurt to register on aros-exec or on dev-ml to discuss it there where most aros devs are at home.

[wXR]

@wawa

You clearly don't understand what GitHub is, or what purpose it serves. I'll give you a hint though, GitHub ≠ git. Spend some time there if you want to understand what I am trying to say. I'm not going to answer this question again and again.

I will however answer your comment about Sourceforge: I'm sure they set it up that way because it all happened long ago, before there was git, GitHub, or many other nice modern tools and services. And because the project remained a hobby for a few people who were already onboarded, no doubt there also hasn't been much consideration given to improving the developer (both potential and actual) user experience, nor the community experience of interacting with what is going on. Which is why it is stuck in the year 2002, at best.

Given the kinds of responses to relatively simple questions that I've seen on aros-exec ("check the mailing list"), that's definitely one of the last places I would want to make a rational, user experience-motivated plea. And in any case, we don't need everyone on board, we just need (as strim pointed out) issues turned on in some GitHub-based AROS mirror, relevant issues created or migrated, and bounties prioritized (here, on aros-exec, or anywhere). Past that point, discussion takes place in the context of the issue itself. And this need only concern m68k-related issues for the time being.

That's an acceptable starting point.

[ncafferkey]

Originally Posted by wXR

A collection of links, to illustrate what I mean about lack of continuity and the poor user experience of getting involved:

1. Issues (for some reason called "bugs" by Sourceforge)

Yeah, that's because they are. "Issues" is a euphemism.

https://sourceforge.net/p/aros/bugs/

Sourceforge is a platform that no developer these days wants to touch with a 10 foot pole. It has a poor, 10-year-old design which unforgivably doesn't serve what I believe is the the main purpose of such platforms: building community engagement around a project.

Old software isn't necessarily bad software (it seems ironic to state otherwise on this forum!). And I disagree on the purpose of a bug tracker: for me, its main purpose is to track bugs.

2. Mailing list

https://www.hepe.com/mailman/listinfo/aros-dev/

This list's archives are not open to review unless one signs up for the mailing list. Fundamentally this means that almost no one on the outside a small circle is going to bother. I see comments on various topics on aros-exec which say, "check the mailing list", and I just think, come on.

The mailing list is for discussions around developing AROS. It shouldn't be of interest to non-developers.

3. Bounties

https://power2people.org/

Nice try, but as an independent site, it fails by not being connected directly to issues, as described in my original post.

From what I can tell, the Github "bounty" you linked to in your initial post simply abuses the bug report mechanism. It doesn't seem that there is any module there to handle the money.

Lets do a little upgrade to some of this, for the sake of everyone's sanity. Now we know that we don't have to swap out the actual version control mechanism (yet, because we have a workaround for now in the mirroring), but lets at least centralize issues at GitHub, so we can begin to take advantage of what GitHub offers in terms of social mechanics.

I'd be glad to help with research and to assist in porting what is necessary.

Overall, I find your tone arrogant and condescending. You give the impression you're going to save us all from our ignorance by making us use whatever's the current flavour of the month.

[wXR]

@ncafferkey

As I said in the original post, there are many tools/platforms for bounties which plug in to GitHub and attach to issues. This is an excellent one:

https://www.bountysource.com/

It is not an abuse of the bug-reporting mechanism; GitHub more generically calls them "issues" and allows things like Bountysource to interface for a reason.

Please do give GitHub a little credit; it is at least the flavour of the last 3-4 years.

[wXR]

To demonstrate how this works (while supporting another cool project), I've attached a $500 bounty to this:

https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetAmiga/issues/21

via this:

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/...200tx-mediator

Now all that needs to be done for a persistent reminder that brings continuity, is addding a comment to the issue with the URL of the bounty. Ideally one might also want to rename the title of the post to add [$500] at the end. But of course, if anyone finds this latter part a bit tacky, it isn't strictly necessary; the bounty exists with or without that change.

[clebin]

@wXR

I'm just coming back to this thread - I don't remember all those demands being in the opening post when I replied. Am I going mad?

I know your heart's in the right place wXR but again you're going about things in the wrong way. You've come in acting like you have all the answers but how many questions have you asked?

There are people who've put thousands of hours of work into AROS - wouldn't it be sensible to ask for their wisdom before you tell everyone what the magic bullet is? It's a little better than the prevous "you're all parasites - let's negotiate!" conversation but it's not brilliant that you've pissed off a key developer before the work's even been defined. EDIT: The parasites thing was a bit below the belt sorry, but a different approach would help. I'm not disputing the value of GitHub either by the way, just that it's up to the devs to make that call.

[Samurai_Crow]

I like the new GitHub pages that runs Jekyll on the server every time a commit to the page source directory's MarkDown documents are detected. It makes static website design easy. I wonder if the folks at GitHub will make a modified issue tracker to implement a forum host. I will not hold my breath.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by clebin

but it's not brilliant that you've pissed off a key developer before the work's even been defined.

crap happens. i think i could have pissed off neil or nick before once or twice.

but then one needs to understand that aros is a common effort. as such a newcomer need to align themselves before trying to lead it. it doesnt bode very well about the seriousity of this initiative, not being able to realise and accept aomething as basic as this.

[wXR]

@clebin

Yes, it was all seeded there from the start. Of course I can't and won't force anyone to do anything; its up to you guys. If you want to work with me on this, check out my suggested path (really check it out), and let me know if it suits you. If the answer is "it just doesn't" or "fuck off", fair enough. Lets talk about it. For now though, the minimum GitHub scenario described above is absolutely a stipulation of these bounties. Which is not to say that we cannot discuss some alternatives, but if you want to get into that debate, please do try to be as informed as possible about what I am suggesting and (maybe more importantly) why I am suggesting it. If anyone would care to explain why the dev-UX nightmare that exists presently is somehow importaint to maintain, I am all ears -- but definitely skeptical.

@wawa

To be clear, I don't want to lead the AROS project and am in no way angling for that. I do however want to see some significantly nicer onboarding for developers (not to mention technical users that wish to interact in any with the development). GitHub gives you this in a convenient pill, so lets bring the mountain to the people already. We've already determined that nothing radical has to be done other than turning on the "Issues" for a mirror repo, and tracking new issues (and existing issues that we'll add bounties to) there. Of course I'd like to see more integration, but we've already come a long way and I am confident that the full transition will happen after a toe is dipped into the water.

[wXR]

I just checked to see if Sourceforge URLs are accepted at Bountysource. And they are kind of (in fact, any URL is) but it doesn't offer any kind of integration at all as it does with GitHub, and thus the UX isn't really improved.

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/...t-save-changes

[Kalamatee]

Originally Posted by wawa

i think i could have pissed off neil or nick before once or twice.

Not half as many times as I have pissed people off

@wXR

As usual people seem to be getting a bit worked up over a simple discussion, however they do raise valid points about why things are the way they are and cannot be changed in some cases (particularly the reverse engineering aspect, and how that relates to where the code is hosted).

The main point is - nothing stops someone setting something like you describe on GitHub already (and as pointed out there is already a mirror etc, however that's something you would need to discuss with Jason), however the "AROS Devs" will not be the ones maintaining it since it is enough work actually developing/testing AROS (and why they "contribute" in the first place) - they just don't have the time/resources to take on such an extra burden, nor the desire for such responsibility.

AROS isn't a commercial product or owned by an individual/organization, so approaching it as such or treating it like it should be will not go far, its an open source operating system, nothing more nothing less - there isn't even a provision for an actual "distribution" other than the test's released as the nightly ISO's and that is also for a reason, because we would prefer a community with different distributions of AROS in different configurations that suit more than just a small group, and the people maintaining those distributions to then have the freedom to set them up the way they see fit, with the components they see fit to use (from AROS or other sources such as aminet) like AfA, AROS vision, ICAros, Broadway, AspireOS...

We also try to not favour any particular distributions way of doing things, or let any one "party" push the direction AROS goes in.

I'm sure for people who haven't been involved in AROS and aren't that interested in the politics, some of the reasons might seem overkill or unnecessary - but there are legal ramifications about many things that cant be dismissed, or summed up without quoting years of discussions on the mailing list. Suffice to say we don't have the authority to relicense other peoples code that has been contributed under the pretence of the APL license, and we cant afford to put the code or developers in situations where the legality of developing AROS or components it has inherited over the years is put at risk. Any discussions around those subjects will be futile.

[strim]

Originally Posted by wawa

radoslaw seems to be a valuable coder. i have though always had an impression that he doesnt value aros very much. hmm?

This is not a correct assumption. Having very limited amount of time, I just chose to work on other things. One gotta prioritise.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Kalamatee

Not half as many times as I have pissed people off

aros may be tough place sometimes.a good place to learn how to align oneself though.

however that's something you would need to discuss with Jason

jason wont be able to contribute. i wrote about it earlier.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by strim

This is not a correct assumption.

im not basing it on your work, but on a comment you made to me once about the chaos in the sources. you certainly have enough on your hands for now. thats why i wondered about your proposal to contribute here.

[strim]

Originally Posted by wawa

thats why i wondered about your proposal to contribute here.

I only meant that I can help with anything->GitHub conversion if anyone cares, because I already have enormous experience with it.

[wXR]

@Kalamatee

Thanks for your measured response and good points. Is there any case history with valid reverse-engineering projects being taken down from GitHub? I see a number of reverse engineering projects hosted or mirrored there without issue already:

https://github.com/helderc/FreeDOS
https://github.com/reactos/reactos

In my opinion, there isn't an issue here, and the worst that happens is the mirror gets taken down and I have to personally go and fight with GitHub about it. If anyone knows anything more specific, a case history in particular, especially modern, I'd like to hear about it. Otherwise this feels to me like hearsay.

About the apparent conflict. I see a reasonable compromise: I am at this point asking only that the issues that have bounties attached to them be tracked/discussed on GitHub. Putting aside all that I said about why I believe GitHub to be a vastly improved user experience, it is also something of a helpful convenience for me when issuing the bounties in the first place. The tight integrations with Bountysource and other modern bounty platforms just makes this simple.

I'll be the first to admit that I am not entirely apolitical in doing this. But I hope you can all believe what @clebin inferred about my intentions at least, and accept this compromise. I'd really like to get on with the bounties already.