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Archive for the ‘flagstone’ Category

Considering A Move To Memphis

Well not exactly but we are moving to GitHub. It’s kind of fashionable to rain on SourceForge and revel in the wonders of DVCS but Git and GitHub offers a number of advantages so this is not just a case of jumping on the bandwagon:

  1. Simpler, lighter structure for the project site that makes it easy to maintain. A nice touch is displaying the contents of the README on the project page. That makes it easy to present a lot of information about a project with very little effort. The issue tracker comes in for a bit of criticism but given the number of active bug reports in either Transform or Translate at any one time it is more than adequate.
  2. Git is inherently fork-able so the code is accessible, maybe even more open, than it was on a central Subversion repository. Don’t like the way the project is going then just fork it. You can even host it on GitHub.
  3. Similarly the nature of Git should make it easier to contribute to the project since you can check out the code and hack it around to your heart’s content. Your proposed changes can be selectively merged back into the project, rather than relying on a monolithic commit.
  4. Separation of concerns. One of the major issues was the schizophrenic nature of the projects. The SourceForge sites were aimed to be project and developer specific. The Flagstone site was essentially a mirror with a nicer interface and included other projects such as Translate and the Cookbook so that all the relevant stuff could be found in one place. The simpler structure GitHub eliminates a lot of duplication and make the relationship between the sites clean and well defined. The code is on GitHub. The value-added content is on the Flagstone site.
  5. GitHub makes it incredibly easy to add new projects. No limits or restrictions other than the public repositories must be Open Source. So the Cookbook and a new Toolbox will also be hosted on GitHub so all the relevent code will be open and accessible and strengthens the separation of concerns.

This all should add up to a lot more time for coding and a lot less time keeping everything in order. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go and untangle all the branches I created in Git. Where’s my chainsaw ?

PS. I’m Considering a move to Memphis, by Colorblind James Experience made it to the all important No. 47 slot in John Peel’s Festive Fifty of 1987.

New mailing lists

There are several new mailing lists to keep you up to date with Transform and Translate. Two main lists used to report all the updates in the Flagstone’s Java and C++ projects:

java-updates@flagstonesoftware.com
cxx-updates@flagstonesoftware.com

Then there are separate lists for each project:

transform-swf-updates@lists.sourceforge.net
translate-swf-updates@lists.sourceforge.net

transform-cxx-updates@lists.sourceforge.net
translate-cxx-updates@lists.sourceforge.net

All the lists are intended for announcements only. If you have any questions regarding thew projects then post them on the forums or contact Flagstone directly.