MSX development site? MSXforge? :)

Ascended (18777)

04-07-2004, 20:02

You know what would be cool? An MSXforge web site A Gforge site with only MSX (related) projects! That's the real MSX dev thing!

Gforge (gforge.org/) can provide a centralized access point for several useful utilities and tools which could be used in a project. Some of these tools include:

A version control repository (CVS)
Mailing lists
Discussion forums
Bug tracking
A web interface to CVS
Task lists
A website which provides some usage statistics, including the project members, the number of mailing lists, CVS statistics, the number of items in the discussion forums, etc.

So, if there's still someone who has some left over bandwith and disk space... (I guess the projects wouldn't be that big...)

An MSX specific collaboration site... a real active developing site... sounds good to me! :)

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Van snout

Ascended (15187)

04-07-2004, 20:07

Hmm, when I joined the MRC (years ago!) I wanted to create the 'MSX Projects List" .Only until recently I got the time to actually code something for it. It's based on the same idea, but less excessive. It's merely a list of projects MSX users are working on. Software, hardware, websites, magazines.. you name it. The list allows you to give some information on what you are working on, link to a website. add downloads (like beta versions) or screenshots but also allows you to let people know what you are looking for (coder, editor, musican etc.). However, the actual project management stuff and CVS will most likely not be implemented. I might be wrong, but I have the idea that many MSX projects are not suitable for a sourceforge-style apporach.

I'm up for a few busy months, but think the MRC Projects List will be introduced somewhere this year

Van Manuel

Ascended (18777)

04-07-2004, 20:12

Why wouldn't MSX projects be suitable for Gforge? I think it's suitable for any project that is developed with several people over the internet.

Van Bart

Paragon (1422)

04-07-2004, 22:24

What makes GForge different from SourceForge? Or am I getting too offtopic now?

Van snout

Ascended (15187)

05-07-2004, 01:54

Gforce can be implemented on other websites, like the MRC I would like to know how others feel about this. Personally I think development tools in the style of Gforge ar just 'too big' for ordinary MSX development situations.

Van BiFi

Enlighted (4348)

05-07-2004, 07:26

I think such a site would be too big indeed for MSX development. I think something like MSX Projects 'the snout way' should be enough.

Van Manuel

Ascended (18777)

05-07-2004, 09:24

It doesn't have to be too big, you don't need to use all of it. But things like CVS and trackers and mailinglists (in case of more than 2 developers) are very useful and are a bare minimum, IMO. (We make extensive use of them for the openMSX project, for example. This is a project that could have been in MSXforge. Another example is the msxdk project which is now on Berlios, which is also GForge based. Aurora and me also have some private CVS server to put our MSX code in, but we'd love to have it on "MSXforge"...)

Bart: if you want to know what the details of GForge (vs. Sourceforge) are: check out the site, I mentioned the URL in the first post. Basically, Gforge is an open sourced fork of the SourceForge code. According to Wikipedia: One of the main Sourceforge programmers started a significant rewrite—the Gforge project—based on the last known CVS version of Sourceforge. New features have been added and free development continues there.
This happened after Sourceforge went closed source.

Van snout

Ascended (15187)

05-07-2004, 11:15

I think implementing Gforge without doing an awful lot of changes would be overkill for MSX. Besides, mailinglists and CVS tend to use a lot of datatraffic, especially if you compare the amount of people using those features with the amount of people visiting the MRC. As our datatraffic don't come for free, I can't say I'd happily implement those features on the MRC server. Besides, you can get free mailinglists like everywhere on the net these days and if you really want to use CVS, you can. I don't think every project listed on MRC should be opensource nor CVS by demand, now, should it?

Then again, if you'd want to tweak down gforge to fit the MRC/MSX needs there would be an awful lot of work to be done. Fitting it into the MRC CMS, adjusting it to the MRC style, deleting all stuff no MSXer really needs, adding all those things I wanted to implement in the Projects list in the first place... the Gforge package takes about 5.7MB, of which 1.2MB is PHP code. As a comparison: the entire PHP code of the complete MRC is less than that. To me, these are all reasons to think I'd better continue development on the Projects list-feature I have been working on recently instead of switching to Gforge.

However, we are talking about two different things here. The projects list is just there to show the MSX Community what you are working on. Apart from that you can look for people who'd like to help you out. It is however no project management tool.

Van Manuel

Ascended (18777)

05-07-2004, 16:38

My experience with sf.net is that we use most of the features of it. I mean, it's not *that* complex. We don't use the task managing stuff, that's indeed a bit overkill for small projects. Stripping it down is probably a lot of work and won't help much; I guess parts that are not used often will simply have little or no data in them. No problem, I think.

I don't think the mailinglists will be a lot of traffic, since there will be little subscribers. Are you sure CVS is a lot of traffic? Most people with a CVS checkout will only do updates, which is only sending over patches to update the sources. Very low traffic, I think. Especially compared to the small amount of source code MSX projects tend to have (compared to PC software, e.g.).
After some thinking: CVS is the most important feature. Then there's communication and administration/documentation: Mailinglists/forum and trackers.

I'm not sure if it's possible, but I guess CVS repositories can be restricted to developers only access. However, I truly believe that keeping the MSXforge software open source would be very good for the MSX development scene: this way libraries can be developed that can be used by everyone and other developers can learn from the source code of other projects. Of course, for projects like GLC, it should be possible to use restrictions. But having the source code on a central place is very very comfortable if you're developing a project with more than one person.

I'm not saying MSXforge should be part of MRC, but it would certainly be nice, since MRC has space and bandwidth (at a cost of course... I know that). But, basically, I was just trying to see if it would be interesting and if someone would be willing to host it.
Note that taking over the style/layout will probably the least of work, since it's pretty easily customizable (check out all the derived sites like Sourceforge.net (sf.net), BerliOS (http://www.berlios.de/index.php.en) and Savannah (http://savannah.gnu.org/); also Gforge is sold to enterprises with support and consultants for customizing it.)

Note that MSXforge (Gforge) is not a project *management* tool, it's a collaboration tool: it makes it easier to develop software with several people that are not physically in the same room. :) (So, very applicable for MSX developers, I think! And it makes developing easier and has several other advantages...)
I must say that openMSX is the first project I've seen from close by that uses a thing like this and it is really really really great! :) It just works fantastically.
Your list doesn't really help the developers, it has thus indeed another purpose. (I do like the idea of it, tho! But it's simply something different.)

Van arnold_m

Master (173)

11-07-2004, 13:28

I think having a web-based collaboration tool for MSX-projects would be a Good Thing (tm).
I really like CVS; I also use it for projects with very little interaction with co-developers such as rddsk, X-drivers for fMSX, ...

I think we should limit the customisation of Gforge to those things that are meant to be customised, and things we /really/ need to change for use with MSX; otherwise we may introduce bugs and make it hard for ourselves to apply bug fixes from Gforge to our derivate.
This may well mean that MSXforge will not fit nicely in MRC, but there should be other sources of space, (CPU-)time and bandwidth

Van anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

15-07-2004, 14:29

Say Quibus... Didn't you have a 10mbit connection? That sounds like enough bandwidth to me