On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 17:29 +1000, Jeff Fearn wrote:
Hi, here is some feedback for people to chew on before the meeting.
Hopefully it will minimize time spent on points that are already know,
get people to think of some other questions to ask, and help people
gather relevant information where required.
Thanks.
Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> We've been talking about rocking up our toolchain by integrating
> Publican[1]. We need to set up some tests to be able to confirm if
the
> tool does what we need, technically, socially, and communally.
>
> Please add yours to the list below, then we can throw it in a wiki
page
> to start working against.
>
> = Technical =
>
> * Does it fulfill all the current tool's capabilities?
> - These need to be defined and listed as specific tests
You need to know which of those capabilities are must haves and which
are niceties.
I'll be surprised if we've baked any niceties in; it's a fairly sparse
toolchain.
The 'docs-common' tools mainly build output from input XML. However,
there are a few bits that are Fedora-specific, such as how we generate
an RPM and SRPM for the release builds, desktop files, etc. In many
cases, I expect we'll just call Publican's make instead.
> * Is it built on sound technology with a future?
The current system is tightly bound to CVS ... please, let CVS die
quietly, it has earned its rest.
There are separate issues here. We cannot separate the need to maintain
packages such as fedora-release-notes in CVS. However, last week we
agreed to stop pushing new books in to CVS and to let them form
one-project-per-book on
fedorahosted.org. Once we give the toolchain
it's own fh.o project space, we can retire most of our CVS usage.
Publican uses standard Linux technologies and FOP. If anyone makes a
better PDF generator than FOP it will get assessed by the publican
team _immediately_!!111!
+1 ... you know you don't have to convince me here. :)
Anyway, yes, that is a good answer to that checklist item.
> * ...
>
> = Social =
>
> * Is there an active upstream?
Bugs against Publican have already being lodged and fixed in the
Fedora Bugzilla.
> * Is upstream responsive to Fedora Docs?
See above.
+1 on both from what I've seen so far.
> * Is the upstream work in the open?
Publican development is hosted on
fedorahosted.org.
> * Can anyone (theoretically) join the upstream work?
Theoretically anyone with a FAS account can join the Publican team.
> * Is there a role Fedora Docs should take in the upstream?
What role does Fedora docs take in other upstream packages?
* We contributed the original patch to xmlto to support FOP
* We've been highly active with the Fedora Java folks to get FOP
packaged and supported in Fedora
* Worked with MoinMoin on Google Summer of Code dev project
* Other small bugfixes, iirc
...
Like other parts of Fedora, we see the value in remaining active with
the upstream, no matter the outcome.
> * ...
>
> = Communal =
>
> * Is there a Fedora packager?
There is no packager for the current system.
Since publican is packaged in Fedora (8, 9 & devel) this question
would seem to have an answer.
> * Is it maintained for EPEL as well?
You mean packaged. The current system is not packaged for EPEL.
"Maintain a package," yes.
Publican has been built in plague for EPEL 4 & 5, the packages
are
waiting to be pushed to the repos.
Sweet.
> * Do other parts of Fedora want to use this tool?
Which other parts of Fedora use the current tool?
Several Fedora projects, e.g. Fedora Directory Server & Fedora IPA
etc, either already use publican or are having their documentation
migrated to publican.
That's good news, thanks.
- Karsten
--
Karsten Wade, Sr. Developer Community Mgr.
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