Release manager webapp and archive reorganization

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:14:20 +0200
Jannis Pohlmann <jannis at xfce.org> wrote:

> Hey all,
> 
> we've discussed a possible archive reorganization before. I'd like to
> get back to this in a second.
> 
> Moka
> ====
> 
> First of all, I have a new project to announce: Moka (name originating
> from stove top espresso makers), a new release manager web
> application.

I've made some progress over the last two days. All essential features
are implemented now. This includes:

  - Manage project and collection releases. This includes uploading
    tarballs for releases, replacing broken tarballs, managing the
    project versions included in collections and of course deleting
    releases. Fat tarballs are now generated for collections.
  - Send release announcements to mailinglists
  - Projects and collections have default announcement mailinglists set
  - Post short release note identi.ca/xfce
  - Export release announcements to Atom feeds

A few details:

Fat tarballs
============

The fat tarballs are created e.g. from /xfce/4.8pre1/src, where the
individual project tarballs reside. The result fat tarball has the
following structure

  src/
   xfce4-panel-4.7.4.tar.bz2
   xfwm4-4.7.2.tar.bz2
   MD5SUMS
   SHA1SUMS

I'm using per-directory checksum files to pollute the archive a little
less. We've done that before (e.g. in the 4.4 cycle). I'm not sure we
need an extra checksum for the fat tarball. Extracting the individual
tarballs and checking them against the checksum files should be enough,
or am I wrong?

Release announcements
=====================

The identi.ca messages have the following format:

  "thunar 1.1.3 released: http://release.xfce.org/...ect/thunar !Xfce"
  "Xfce 4.8pre3 released: http://release.xfce.org/...ion/xfce !Xfce"

The links point to the Atom feeds which reside in
http://release.xfce.org/feeds/. Here are two example feeds which give
an idea on how this looks like (you can browse everything inside feeds/
using apache directory listings - which is pointless with only two
feeds but could be useful with more):

  http://release.xfce.org/feeds/project/thunar
  http://release.xfce.org/feeds/collection/xfce

This is also the format of the announcement mails which are sent to
mailing lists. All of this is highly flexible and we can change it
anytime. Templatezzzzz!

Deployment of Moka itself
=========================

I've modified Moka so that it can now be installed as a Ruby gem. This
means it's very easy to set it up and update it (see
http://git.xfce.org/jannis/moka/tree/examples/one-man-one-project/ for
a very basic example setup). I'll make it available via rubyforge soon.
Dunno whether other projects might be interested in it. Personally, I
think it can be useful even in a single project situation.

What next?
==========

I'd like to see some more feedback. Take a look at the screenshots I
posted in my initial mail, check if you're ok with the new archive
layout I've suggested and let me know if you have any ideas or
complaints. I don't want to rush things. 

In case we all agree that we want this: it's installed on mocha
already, it just needs a few paths and configuration files changed to
make it point to our archive and to know about all the projects and
maintainers. And, yeah, of course the archive layout would have to be
changed a little bit. 

Ok, let me know -- again -- what you think?

Cheers,
Jannis
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