[ocaml-infra] Wireframe demo of OCaml.og

[Sylvain Le Gall]

2013/3/15 Maxence Guesdon <Maxence.Guesdon at inria.fr>:
> On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:33:31 +0100
> Sylvain Le Gall <sylvain+ocaml at le-gall.net> wrote:
>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Sylvain Le Gall <sylvain+ocaml at le-gall.net>
>> Date: 2013/3/15
>> Subject: Re: [ocaml-infra] Wireframe demo of OCaml.og
>> To: Maxence Guesdon <Maxence.Guesdon at inria.fr>
>>
>>
>> 2013/3/15 Maxence Guesdon <Maxence.Guesdon at inria.fr>:
>> > On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:53:47 +0000
>> > Amir Chaudhry <amc79 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Dear all,
>> >>
>> >> I've been working on putting together wireframes to demonstrate aspects of the design and functionality we'd like to introduce into the OCaml.org website.  Today, I published a blog post summarising this work, which includes screencasts and a link to a clickable demo you can play with.
>> >>
>> >> http://amirchaudhry.com/wireframe-demos-for-ocamlorg
>> >>
>> >> I'd be keen to know what you think so please send any feedback via the infrastructure mailing list (infrastructure at lists.ocaml.org).
>> >
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > Thanks for this presentation. This made me think about the future of the
>> > Caml Hump. Now that Opam is the ocaml package manager, would it be
>> > possible to merge Opam and Hump ?
>> >
>> > I mean: could it be possible to create some kind of "info" packages in
>> > opam to indicate that a library/tool/... exists but is not packaged
>> > yet ? With a flag to make them appear in opam list and search ?
>> >
>> > This could encourage contributors to package not yet packaged tools and
>> > libs.
>> >
>> > Regarding tags, it is possible that I missed the information, but is
>> > opam going to handle tags associated to packages ? (I saw some
>> > tag-based search in packages in Amir's demos)
>> >
>> > With these "info" packages and a tag system, opam should be able to
>> > replace the hump, allowing anobody to contribute to (this
>> > replacmenet of) the hump.
>> >
>> > At last, I also saw in Amir's demos news feeds associated to packages.
>> > Will the RSS feed be indicated in opam package information ?
>>
>> That lead me to think about oasis-db in fact. You can upload .tar.gz
>> directly into oasis-db and get it easily (there is a REST API to get
>> data out of oasis-db). We also already have an RSS feed et al. The
>> only missing piece is a command line tool to upload (half a lie, since
>> the tool exists but is not released).
>>
>> I think merging providing Hump info through OASIS-DB is a 0day work.
>
> Apart from putting information in form, which is the longest part of
> course.

The only real field to fill in the URL where you can download the
.tar.gz and its optional (in this case we use a local copy). The order
parameter should be correct if you don't have a crazy versionning
scheme.

The package name and version are guessed based on configure.ac/META
file or _oasis . The name/version are only editable when we have to
guess (i.e. no _oasis in the tarball).

I would say uploading a tarball and filling 1 field in a form is not a
big deal. The command line interface allows you to directly upload the
tarball with the URL (good for automatisation).

>
>> The RSS:
>> http://oasis.ocamlcore.org/dev/feeds/rss2
>
> Well, this is a oasis-db feed, not a per-package feed as such one
> appeared in Amir's demos, on the Core package page.

Sorry, read too fast. I will probably add a couple of fields like
ProjectRSSFeed, ProjectGooglePlus, ProjectGithub and ProjectTwitter to
_oasis.

Also, I am wondering if it is not damaging to have a feed with very
little news for pakcages (Core has content in its feed, but this is
not a general case). E.g. there is a lot of small projects/libraries.

>
>> The API:
>> http://oasis.ocamlcore.org/dev/api/
>>
>> Looking at the wireframe, I think we should also consider displaying
>> GODI and OASIS-DB information. This can be very useful to dev that can
>> quickly see that there are 1 version behind of a package (e.g.
>> ocaml-expect is lagging one version behind in OPAM wrt to OASIS-DB).
>
> I think there should be one and only one place to put information about
> packages feeding the ocaml.org website.
>

I beg you to reconsider this. I know it is easier and nicer to have
only one package manager and one place to look for, but I don't think
skipping other sources is good. You should at least consider the
option to do so. I really don't want to see GODI and OASIS-DB removed
from the big picture.

Regards
Sylvain