"Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild" repentinus@fsfe.org, Thu, 26 Sep 2013 14:45:30 +0000:
While I agree we do not currently have enough volunteers to keep all of the information up-to-date, I am of the opinion that we should deploy the new site as planned and leave the decision of which fields in the JSON files to fill to the PDF readers team.
Deploying the new site "as planned" kind of involves keeping or a least having the information on it up to date.
Maintaining all the information we have fields for is not realistic at the moment,
agreed
but it might be in the future.
... or maybe soon after that.
The new architecture actually makes the site easier to maintain than before. Especially adding and removing readers – yes, we do need to do that: some listed readers are unmaintained, and one reader contains non-free software – has become easier on the orders of magnitude.
I'm happy to read that.
The technical problems I have been experiencing are most likely the fact that the new version probably requires altering files outside the SVN repository (possibly updating webgen, installing Perl modules or alike), which I am unable to do and system hackers seem to have no time for. Other than that, I am fairly certain that the new site can be deployed to test.pdfreaders.org and pdfreaders.org fairly easily.
Yes, the initial deployment might well require shell access to the server.
Where providing some data does not make much sense, we ought not to provide such data at all.
OK, that would be a standpoint we can elaborate on. So we accept that we have occasions where we omit a download link...
I am of the opinion that we should deal with such issues if/when they arise.
I am of the opinion that "we" should be exchanged for a more specific term. I understand that on many occasions, this kind of work has been seen to somehow. This time however pulling in active volunteers for the project seems to be an issue.
Indeed. However, I think that we should simply go live with the new site, possibly making small updates to the JSON schema to make more of the data optional. E.g., if we cannot/do not want to maintain version information for the readers, we would be able to stop doing that. But other than making most reader data optional, I do not currently see a need for large modifications and insist on deploying the development version ASAP and just seeing how it goes.
OK, that's pretty much what I proposed a while ago meeting some resistance then. Resistance, mind, which is well substantiated too.
If porting to one of the alternatives Sam mentioned can be easily done and would ease further maintenance and development, then that is also worth considering.
Sam proposed alternatives regarding the build-system and I too think, that we should keep them in mind. Though I believe this is not an immediate maintenance issue and in this case I am the one who believes that we can postpone the work until it becomes necessary. Regarding the storage of reader information we already use a simple text-based way. The format can probably be simplified further, but not easily and not without knowing what will become of the site now.
Personally I am of the opinion that the work that has went into the new site thus far has been of high quality and the new site, with all its flaws, is better than the old one. (Thanks, Paul!)
I sure feel flattered ;-)