[RFR] Infrastructure sponsor needed for Fedora Distribution App.

[Mike McGrath]

On Tue, 23 Feb 2010, susmit shannigrahi wrote:

> Let me be clear first.
>
> I am not much concerned about what admins do. I am more concerned
> about how easy we make it for the "customer" when he requests media.
>
> >> > How is maintaining it in an app going to be so much easier then
> >> > maintaining it in the wiki?
> >>
> >> It is database driven. So entering data and presenting them don't need
> >> wiki edits.
> >>
> >
> > scripts.
>
>
> >> >> 2. It is a pain to maintain the wiki list and verify each and every
> >> >> vendor. We plan to notify each vendor upon a new release. We also want
> >> >> to let them have an account so that they can update their accounts
> >> >> themselves.
> >> >
> >> > You still have to verify vendors and notify them.
> >> Currently, we don't or can't do that because it is so much manual work.
> > Scripts.
>
> What is the difference between writing a script and maintaining that
> and writing an simple app and maintaining that?
>

Tons, in particular the number of libraries it depends on and the security
of exposing it to the net.

> >> >
> >> >> 3. Currently, in freemedia, we open the form for a day or two and
> >> >> close it for the rest of the month. This creates a problem for us. We
> >> >> want to keep the form opened for NA for a longer time, EMEA for lesser
> >> >> time and so on. In this app, there is a python-sqlite wrapper around
> >> >> trac which enables us to differentiate between the regions and
> >> >> close/open the form for a region on demand.
> >> >
> >> > Why not have multiple forms?
> >>
> >> We have to disable/enable each form using puppet. We have to do it each month.
> >> it will not be possible.
> >>
> >
> > Of course it would be.  You write a script to generate your pages, change
> > a 1 to a 0.
>
> But I don't have time, not energy to login to puppet every time
> someone tells me to do the changes. So will puppet access be given to
> current freemedia admins so that they can run the scripts?
>

So why not have puppet pull from an external resource like the wiki?  We
do this in Fedora regularly.

> >> > why not just use a spreadsheet or something?
> >>
> >> And how do we present the data to the requesters?
> >
> > how do you do it now?
>
> Wiki. And requesters have to go through the long list of hundreds of
> links. That is not the ideal way, is it?
>

I'd assume each vendor has a link, will the webapp be getting rid of
vendors?  If not then they still have to go through a long list, if it's a
search thing, why not break out the vendors?

>
> I saw some thread that we were worried about actually losing our
> users. One of the reasons for that low offline availability. It is not
> that Fedora is not available offline. It is. But the information is
> presented so clumsily that nobody uses that option.
>

So reorganize the information.  Perhaps it would help if you could clearly
outline the problems and solutions you're trying to solve.

	-Mike