[Mageia-sysadm] maint db, rails and hosting

[Romain d'Alverny]

Hi there,

After we noticed that the existing maintainer-db app had no license,
we ought to reimplement it, fast.

I asked about this on the webteam list with some requirements and
kosmas kindly took the hold for this, proposing to implement it with
Rails [1]. As I stated in the original call (and later confirmed [2])
Rails was a possibility (as well as Django), forgot to mention
Symphony (was pointed out later); goal was to: stay open to new
contributions and try, if it came, with some technology that is easy
enough to host and still a bit new in this community.

As misc noticed me, yes, I didn't ask sysadm first about this (hosting
st else than PHP/Perl stuff); I have to admit that I expected the
point to be raised on the webteam ml at the time (the whole
conversation started in a meeting point pre-summary and took over 6
days before I said go).

So, yes, that means we would be to host a Rails app; it's not for the
sake of trying any type of buzz'd-about technology out there, it could
have been Django as well or Symphony. I didn't suggest erlang,
node.js, go or tcl frameworks. :-p

As a sidenote, kosmas set his own repository over gitorious.org but
has been notified that the master branch should move to mageia.org
infra at least when stable and in anyway, as soon as a repository is
set up for it. Same for issues (as soon as Bugzilla is up,
bugs/requests will move there, if there were any already before).

So, this mail was about clarifying the point; I'll try better next
time. As for hosting the thing, I asked kosmas about the requirements;
given the app needs, it will be a basic Rails/MySQL setup I guess, but
better wait for his take and his help.

What's your take on this?
 - hosting Rails apps; how/where to host them (remember we have Gandi vhosts);
 - how we can deal with open contributions, specifying base
requirements for the tools we expect to receive (being square, but
flexible enough to accept more contributions); and what these
requirements would be;
 - how it's acceptable that people use infrastructure outside of
mageia.org to bootstrap their contributions (like, still pointing that
a master branch should be reasonably migrated to mageia.org infra, or
other guideline);
 - how we can better advertise our infrastructure and services (how
they work, how they can be used) *wink* and the sysadm team needs
(more contributions/contributors)

Cheers,

--
Romain

[1] https://mageia.org/pipermail/mageia-webteam/2010-December/000064.html
[2] https://mageia.org/pipermail/mageia-webteam/2010-December/000070.html