From: James Britt Date: 2005-03-04T15:04:45+09:00 Subject: Re: RAA Status & b leon breedt wrote: > On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 03:37:54 +0900, James Britt > 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has tended to be too incomplete or out-of-date.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 out of date.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. Indeed it is; the question I'm trying to provoke is, Is that the best path? > > 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. Oh, good. *2* places to look for and download things. Which is the authorative source? > > 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. > > 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. > > Less is more... Indeed. How is this less? Adding another feature to RubyForge so that the RAA can duplicate, I mean mirror, an existing RubyForge feature? The idea of mirroring select aspect of RubyForge (downloads, project/stat indices) is worth considering, but then we're no longer talking about RAA; this a new project, and simply redefining the RAA as a lightweight mirror of RubyForge is just sleight-of-hand. James