Suggestions for user contributed software in source code repository.

November 20, 2010, 07:30:03 pm

I notice you're adding user contributions from the forum to the IRToy subversion repository. While this makes things more convenient right now, I suggest you at least add a README with possibly the link to the forum thread that you extracted it from(*). Someone who comes along later is going to have a really hard time figuring out what all this stuff is and what is current. Further, I'd suggest making sure these are labeled as user contributions, (typical convention is a "contrib" directory) so it's easier to distinguish the more "official" or more directly maintained software from things that were pulled out of the forum. It might help to put the contributions in separate directories by contributor. If the contribution becomes a more official project with multiple maintainers then one could "promote" it out of the contrib/user/ directory and into it's own directory. In other words it might be worthwhile to make a distinction between something that was copied from the forum and a project that is being maintained by someone with SVN access.

(*)If the software gets a DP wiki page, the README should ideally be updated to point to that.

Just some suggestions, there are many ways of organizing this stuff, but I thought I'd make a few suggestions while it is still early.

Hope This Helps,
--Rob

Re: Suggestions for user contributed software in source code repository.

Reply #1 – November 21, 2010, 08:53:46 am

Thanks Rob,

I added a README.TXT with short description, license, and links to the forum and wiki. The other stuff sounds great too. I usually try to link the forum post in the commit log (I know I forgot for Anoton's stuff, but I think I included the wiki link), but I realize most people won't hit the commit log.

Re: Suggestions for user contributed software in source code repository.

Reply #2 – November 21, 2010, 10:24:49 am

+1 for the ./contrib/user/ suggestion.