mentors.debian.net Todo/Feature list
News
Lucas Nussbaum [http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=258 blogged] about REVU and mentors and what's good and bad. Since there are a few shortcomings and the code of the mentors site would need a going-over anyway it may be time for a 3.0 version of the site. The first version was written in Perl. The second was at least written in Python but with lots of hacks and not using object-relations mappers or templating. The third version will hopefully do it right.
Feature list
(this list may not cover all existing features)
General ideas
[http://pylonshq.com Pylons] 0.9.6 based (a flexible Python web framework)
Using proper object-relational mapping (ORM) with [http://www.sqlalchemy.org SQLAlchemy] 0.4
Javascript helper library [http://www.jquery.com/ jQuery]
- Emphasis on social interaction/networking
More interactivity - AJAX/AHAH - Web 3.0
- More automated QA checks of the package
Better looks of the site (steal from http://launchpad.net, http://xing.com, http://debian.wgdd.de/debian/, www.haveamint.com/)
- User accounts for Debian developers/sponsors, too, so they can comment/score package and maintainers
Proper URLs (e.g. http://mentors.debian.net/packages/cream instead of http://mentors.debian.net/cgi-bin/view_packages?package=cream) - RESTful
- Making information available to others through proper interfaces (JSON, XML, SOAP, whatever) - might help sponsors.debian.net - and document that interface properly ("mentors API")
- Getting BTS information through its LDAP interface
More icons for better overview (http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/)
Clear start page with big buttons telling the purpose of the site (similar to http://flickr.com)
- RSS feed on new uploads
- search functions (sponsors, sponsorees, packages)
run the new site in parallel to the old site as a beta service (http://mentors.debian.net:5000)
- make the Python code available (careful not to publish passwords in the repository)
- proper documentation of modules, URLs, database schema in restructured-text format within the repository
Uploading ("Importer")
- QA tests
- build test (perhaps through pbuilder - do we really need to spend so many resources? is it the scope of mentors?)
- piuparts test (can we handle that with the resources?)
- lintian checks (backport of lintian)
- linda checks (backport of linda)
- do the closed bugs belong to the package? (some packages accidentally closed other packages' bugs)
- native package check
- Inform people who subscribed to the package
- Pull orig.tar.gz from official Debian repositories if not included in the upload (is that really useful?)
- maintainers should be forced to increase the package version/revision number to avoid confusion when different package contents had the same version/revision number (yes, this will be confusing at first)
Packages
Package list (http://mentors.debian.net/packages)
- pagination (not displaying everything on the same page)
- allow filtering (e.g. only show packages needing a sponsor)
Per-package page (http://mentors.debian.net/packages/foobar)
- Closed bugs (clicking on a bug opens a popup getting information from the BTS over LDAP - ldap://bts2ldap.debian.net:10101)
- Other packages from this maintainer
- History
- History (keep a history of uploads, comments, changes)
- history is kept for all eternity - even for packages that were deleted already
- Comments
- if done comfortably this could replace the RFS-threads on the debian-mentors mailing list
- Check if the package is already in Debian
- Creating RFS boilerplates (filling out as much information as possible)
- Is there a new upstream version?
- Popcon score
- How long has the package been waiting for a sponsor?
- display information on copyright, upstream homepage if possible
Maintainers/sponsorees
- Scoring (karma)
- Every registered user can add an opinion
- is the maintainer is doing well or not?
- Add comments like "This user is constantly hijacking packages. Beware!" or "All the packages have been great." (like on eBay)
- no anonymous comments - always show who wrote that
- Information page
- which packages does the sponsor have online
- Scoring/Karma
- allow changing GPG key
Sponsors/DDs
- Let DDs/sponsors register/have accounts, too
- List of preferences (programming langue, CDBS/debhelper, ...) so that maintainers can try to find a matching sponsor
Repository access
don't store the packages in an Apache-index-style directory tree but serve the files through ?FileApp (for more flexibility)
- count downloads for statistics ("your package 'foobar' has been downloaded 23 times")
- does anyone use mentors as a "deb-src" repository? or do we all use "dget -x"?
Background magic
- monitor debian-devel-changes mailing list to see if packages were sponsored already
- check if newer packages are availible in the Debian repository
- announce new uploads on IRC (#debian-mentors on OFTC) - perhaps even /msg sponsors if they are online
- warn maintainer about old packages (older than 3 months) / expire old packages (older than 6 months)
Developers
This is a list of people involved in the 3.0 relaunch of the mentors site:
Christoph Haas?BR Been there since the start. Founded the service years ago with Ivo Marino, Christoph Siess and D.K.Gebhart. Claims to always have done most of the work. Currently the only one working on the site, fixing bugs and doing user support
(add your name here)
The Subversion repository will be made available. Public: read-only. Developers: full read-write with username/password.
Include this
Some documents from the [http://workaround.org/mentors.debian.net/doc/ repository] need to be included in the above list.