[sd] SD: release status? Debian package status? future plans?

[Christine Spang]

[summary: some things are changing; let's get things rolling
again! see below for details!]

On Sat, Apr 02, 2011 at 11:35:12AM +0100, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I noticed that I'm using a fairly old version of SD, specifically, 0.74,
> as packaged in Debian. It seems to have been released over a year ago.
> There's been quite a lot of development activity since.

Yes, you're absolutely right!

> I would prefer to not have to update SD manually. Is there a release
> about to happen soon? Will the Debian package be updated at the same
> time? Are there any plans for doing frequent (monthly? quarterly?)
> releases in the future?

Here's a goal I think I can stick to: there will be a
release by the end of the month. I've been updating the
Debian packages when I update the CPAN release; both are
quite out-of-date right now.

As Jesse just announced[1] on the Prophet list, I'm formally
taking over leadership of the project.

I have a number of changes I want to make, with the goal of
lowering the barrier to contribution:

- Moving the code and website off of Best Practical's
  servers. Not because Best Practical hasn't been a great
  home, but just because using their infrastructure makes it
  difficult to give arbitrary folks commit access.

- Making more frequent releases. At least quarterly, but
  maybe more often? It depends on how things pan out.

- Improving our documentation. Yeah. I'm going to get
  together with Jesse to work through some of Prophet's more
  gnarly internals to get a better understanding of them
  when he's back in the country.

Lars, I'd like to move the Prophet/SD website to
branchable.com. Would you consider giving us free hosting
there?

I've gotten started here:

http://prophet.branchable.com/

Anyone and everyone, please help move existing content from
http://syncwith.us/ over to the new site! We'll transfer the
domain name once things are looking good. You don't need to
be a programmer to help out with the website, and it's
incredibly useful.

If you want commit access to the website git repository (so
you can edit not-from-the-web), send me your SSH public key.

For the code, I'd like to move to gitorious.org. I've gotten
started here: http://gitorious.org/prophet

If you'd like commit access to prophet/sd, if you've made a
commit before, send me your SSH key and I'll add you right
away. If you haven't, send me a patch and if it looks good
or good-with-minor-changes, I'll add you too.

My philosophy going in is going to be to minimize barriers
to getting people involved; we can take a step back and make
things more structured later if it seems like things aren't
working.

Spang

1. http://lists.bestpractical.com/pipermail/prophet/2011-April/000053.html