From: Richard Kilmer <rich@...>
Date: 2005-03-04T14:29:39+09:00
Subject: Re: RAA Status & b




On 3/4/05 12:04 AM, "leon breedt" <bitserf@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 03:37:54 +0900, James Britt
> <jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com> wrote:
>> 1. Dump the RAA.
>>    Don't bother fixing it.
>>    Tell people to move their code to RubyForge.
>> 
>> 2. Dump the RAA
>>     Tell people to find a home page for their
>>     project and include "RAA" and "Ruby" in the keyword meta tag,
>>     and let Google do the rest.
>> 
>> 2. Dump the RAA
>>     Tell people to find a home page for their
>>     project and tag it on del.icio.us with the tags 'Ruby'
>>     and 'RAA', plus a brief description.
>> I get the sense that this blogger's opinion was based entirely on what
>> he  saw at the RAA.   RAA has pretty much fallen off my radar; If I'm
>> looking for a Ruby app or lib I turn to RubyForge or Google.  The RAA
>> has tended to be too incomplete or out-of-date.
> I disagree strongly with this "dump the RAA" verdict.
> 
> I don't understand the desire to dump something simply because it is
> out of date. There is nothing wrong with its core fundamentals. Its
> only problem is that it is not that up to date, but that is a solvable
> problem.
> 
> If it was up to date, and had mirroring capabilities, it would serve
> as an excellent directory and central download repository for
> anything, including .gem/.rpa. RAA's virtue is its extreme simplicity.
> In terms of browsing software, and finding something quickly, its UI
> beats RubyForge hands down.


The RubyForge team has always viewed RAA as THE project metadata repository
for the Ruby community.  There are lots of folks (1,700+) who house over 500
ruby projects on RubyForge right now.  Many don't use all the features, that
is true, but many developers don't have a place on the net to store their
code/projects...thus the reason we stood RubyForge up.

> 
> My major beef with the RubyForge/GForge/SourceForge is that for every
> single project you register, the assumption is made that you want the
> entire set of project lifecycle features, and clutters your project
> page with every single feature of the software. To me, thats  worse.

Worse than what?  Its not worse if you have no other place to put stuff.
You don't need to use it...no one is forcing that...its just an available
service that we pay $$ for to provide something that we saw was missing.

> 
> I'm not saying its not providing a valuable service. But trying to
> provide everything to everyone has never seemed to work out in the
> real world. What is RubyForge's core valuable feature? An SCM
> repository, mailing lists, and a Wiki, and stats/news on the
> registered projects, and central downloads.
> 
> So why not add mirroring capabilities to RAA and have RubyForge focus
> on the things that make it useful? And have RAA be the directory, with
> RubyForge having being taught to speak to RAA.

It was our intent to do this, time has gotten the best of that intention,
but its 'on the list'.   Our idea was to have RubyForge projects
auto-populate the RAA as those projects release files, edit their metadata,
etc.  Its an integration effort that we have not had the time to do yet,
that's all.  Insofar as searching for things, I agree that RAA is fast and
simple to use.  It would make a nice interface plugin for RubyForge to have
the RAA search box on the main screen.

> 
> Less is more...
> 
> Leon
> 
> 

If less is more why use gmail ;-)

-rich