Re: [boost] [infrastructure] The vault vs. project hosting vs. Boost hosting?

Subject: Re: [boost] [infrastructure] The vault vs. project hosting vs. Boost hosting?
From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-07-17 08:36:42

On 7/17/2011 5:59 AM, Klaim - Joël Lamotte wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 05:22, Rene Rivera<grafikrobot_at_[hidden]>  wrote:
>
>> Which I guess is what Dave is suggesting above. I don't know enough about
>> Github to see if it can deliver on the above features, so I will leave that
>> for others to comment on. But if I had to choose I would likely use the
>> Google project hosting.
>
>
> For your information :
>
> Fundamentally, they offer the same services. There are just two important
> differences between those :
>   1. GitHub is oriented on "collaboration" (whatever it means) and provide
> additional tools to this goal compared to GCodeHosting.

It would be good to know what those additional tools/features are. And 
more apt, if they are things that authors would want or need.

>   2. GCH provide Subversion and Mercurial repositories while GitHub provides
> Git only repositories.

Correction; GCH provides Subversion, Mercurial, and Git 
<http://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/ChoosingAVersionControlSystem>.

> Git&  Mercurial can work together easily it seems and there are tools and
> extensions to those to help working with svn repositories too.
>
> My suggestions:
>   a) choose a main "central" repository hosting service, say github
>   b) maybe maintain copies of those repositories on a more private server
> (maybe osuosl?)
>   c) when someone provides source code to be put in sandbox or vault, they
> should provide a repository address : that external repository could be
> anywhere, the vault/sandbox would only be a regularly updated clone of that.
>
> That way you get a "central" public vault/sandbox, an easy to setup and
> secure backup (independent from the hosting service) and developers can use
> whatever repository hosting they want too.

Although that gives a similar result to the traditional vault, it has 
one significant drawback. It introduces a management layer for Boost for 
each proposed library/file. This is worse than both the old vault 
(self-registration) and sandbox (one-time moderator registration).

> The backup would be easy to setup assuming you're using decentralized
> control source like on GitHub (no choice there), making changes transactions
> between repositories easier.

Not sure what you mean here. But backups are "easy" with most RCS. Since 
there's no need to worry about the revision part (as it's a straight 
copy not a merge).

> By the way, may I ask why does the github vault repositories contain zips
> instead of content of the zip files?

Because it's a direct copy of what the old vault contained. Which was 
just people uploading ZIPs for others to get.

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