Re: new homepage and mailing lists for asdf?

[ This is a resend; I would be surprised if the original showed up,
  but it's possible, in which case apologies to all. ]

Marco Baringer <[email protected]> writes:

>   The advantages to hosting asdf on cl.net as opposed to sourceforge
>   are, imho:

Addressing your purported advantages (rather than what might have been
quite a sensible proposal, "make a static homepage for asdf"):

>   1) there is a project named asdf with it's own home page and mailing
>      lists. newbies often have a hard time figuring out where the asdf
>      documentation is located and having asdf hosted inside cclan is
>      confusing, especially when you consider that asdf is by far and
>      away better known and more used than cclan itself.

I'm sorry, I don't buy this.  Searching for "asdf" with google gets
you both the cliki page and the asdf manual on the first page of hits;
in any case why should the URL <http://common-lisp.net/project/asdf/>
be any better than, say, <http://cclan.sourceforge.net/asdf/>?  That
is, if there is an argument here, then the argument is in favour of a
better web presence, not in favour of common-lisp.net.

>   2) cl.net is already home to many lisp projects.

sourceforge.net has better uptime over the last 12 months.  (I happen
to think that this is a lot more relevant to a hosting decision than
the number of other projects that are being hosted; YMMV.)

>   3) cl.net's mailing list archives as far easier to use than
>      sourceforge.

This is true (sourceforge's are particularly awful); however, gmane's
archives are far easier to use than either cl.net's or sourceforge's,
as they don't have the weird division by month that breaks all
threading, and are offered over nntp as well as over the web.

>   4) we can provide a single download locations for asdf extensions
>      (asdf-binary-locations, build-asdf-package, etc.) in a way which,
>      for whatever reason, isn't currently done.

I'm not sure what you mean by "a single download location", but on the
assumption that you mean a set of weblinks or maybe just one tarball:
that can be provided more-or-less anywhere.  Again, not an issue of
hosting location.

>   I want to make it clear that I am _not_ attempting to fork asdf nor
>   am I auto-proclaiming myself an asdf maintainer. I just feel that,
>   given asdf's central role in common-lisp development, it deserves
>   its own (non-cliki) home page and mailing lists. I have not created
>   a repo for asdf on cl.net and won't do that unless asked to by
>   asdf's current maintainers.

If you had done something such as improve the cliki page, or created a
static page for discussion, or actually submitted some patches to the
code or the README, then firstly we would have concrete evidence or
otherwise about the suitability or not of your new project on
common-lisp.net versus the status quo, and secondly we would have
actual content, whichever way any hosting decision goes.

I'm not sure what you gained by creating a project on common-lisp.net
first and asking questions later, and I'm not sure that you are
either, given the disclaimer above.  In any case, my advice is more or
less this: instead of worrying about hosting decisions, if you
perceive a visibility problem with respect to asdf, then produce
something which addresses the problem; if this requires a space on the
web, then a space on the web can be found -- and if you don't know the
answer to something yourself, by all means ask!

>   (btw who maintains asdf?)

Recent committers include Peter van Eynde, Edi Weitz, Nikodemus
Siivola, Gary King and myself.  (Speaking personally, I consider the
addition of features to asdf slightly misguided, and would much prefer
an a2sdf which addressed the fundamental misdesigns that have become
apparent over the years, most notably the separation of the traversal
from performing operations.)

Cheers,

Christophe

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