[ocaml-infra] Migration plan and bug hunt for ocaml.org - http://preview.ocaml.org

[Amir Chaudhry]

We're nearly at the end of the bug hunt and only have two blocking issues to deal with.  These should be closed soon and we will then be able to merge the design into the live site and continue improvements there.  

Ashish, Christophe, regarding the deployment phase, I think it would be better to do that on Monday rather than the end of this week.  My reasoning is that should anything need our attention, we'll be better prepared to deal with it on a weekday, rather than encroaching on a weekend.  Does that sound ok to you?

As a side note, it's encouraging that people have also been suggesting improvements to content during this phase [2].  I hope to see much more community activity in that regard over the coming weeks!

[1] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml.org/issues/184
[2] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml.org/issues?labels=content

Best wishes,
Amir

On 6 Nov 2013, at 10:31, Amir Chaudhry <amc79 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> Dear caml-list,
> 
> We're close to releasing the new design of ocaml.org but need help from the community to identify and fix bugs before we switch next week.
> 
> Ashish, Christophe, Philippe and I have been discussing how we should go about this and below is the plan for migration.  If you'd like to discuss any of this, then the infrastructure list is the best place to do so (cced).
> 
> 1. We've made a new branch on the main ocaml.org repository [1] with the redesign.  This branch is a fork of the main one and we've simply cleaned up and replayed our git commits there.
> 
> 2. We've built a live version of the new site, which is visible at http://preview.ocaml.org - this is rebuilt every few minutes from the branch mentioned above.  
> 
> 3. Over the course of one week, we ask the community to review the new site and report any bugs or problems on the issue tracker [2]. We triage those bugs to identify any blockers and work on those first.  This is the phase we'll be in from *today*.
> 
> 4. After one week (7 days), and after blocking bugs have been fixed, we merge the site into the main branch.  This would effectively present the new site to the world.  
> 
> During the above, we would not be able to accept any new pull requests on the old site but would be happy to accept them on the new branch.  Hence, restricting the time frame to one week.  
> 
> Please note that the above is only intended to merge the *design* and *toolchain* for the new site.  Specifically, we've created new landing pages, have new style sheets and have restructured the site's contents as well as made some new libraries [3, 4].  The new toolchain means people can write files in markdown, which makes contributing content a lot easier.  
> 
> Since the files are on GitHub, people don't even need to clone the site locally to make simple edits (or even add new pages). Just click the 'Edit this page' link in the footer to be taken to the right file in the repository and GitHub's editing and pull request features will allow you to make changes and submit updates, all from within your browser [5].  
> 
> There is still work to be done on adding new features but the above changes are already a great improvement to the site and are ready to be reviewed and merged.
> 
> [1] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml.org/tree/redesign
> [2] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml.org/issues
> [3] http://pw374.github.io/posts/2013-09-05-22-31-26-about-omd.html
> [4] http://pw374.github.io/posts/2013-10-03-20-39-07-OPAMaging-MPP.html
> [5] https://help.github.com/articles/creating-and-editing-files-in-your-repository
> 
> Best wishes,
> Amir
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