Definitely agree with Mike on issue tracking being
vital. Each TC currently does its own thing, with varying degrees of
success. Atlassian (makers of Jira) has a free Jira use for established
Open Source projects policy. I could easily see them being persuaded to
adopt a free for Open Standards development orgs policy if OASIS talked to
them.
I also agree that initially the main use for VCS will be
conformance and test suite files, but I think that will change. It may be
wishful thinking but I predict technical committees getting more
into XML documents (Docbook and/or Dita) as the main version, with PDF and
HTML versions generated from those documents. I'd also predict more of a
demand for reference implementation of standards being created as part of the
standards publication process. If these two predictions come true both
are going to need a good VCS.
I believe someone mentioned using GIT in conjunction with
Subversion, which got me thinking that might actually be the best of both
worlds. I found similar thoughts in more detail at this blog post:
Folks,
The
main use I see for a version control system is going to be with the mass of
files which are going
to
be associated with conformance and test suite, This stuff really is like
a coding project, at least for
the
SCA related TCs. XML files, code files of various types.
Rather
than "bug tracking", the SCA TCs think that an issue tracking system
is vital for any TC work
and
we have been using a JIRA system hosted on www.osoa.org for
some time now. We needed
permission
from OASIS to do this, but we ensured that OASIS rules apply to that system,
with full
public
read access and a controlled list of issue editors elected from each TC. It
has worked well
for
us so far.
Yours, Mike.
Strategist - Emerging Technologies, SCA & SDO.
Co Chair OASIS SCA Assembly TC.
IBM Hursley Park, Mail Point 146, Winchester, SO21 2JN, Great Britain.
Phone & FAX: +44-1962-818014 Mobile: +44-7802-467431
Email: mike_edwards@uk.ibm.com
From:
|
"Dennis E. Hamilton"
<dennis.hamilton@acm.org>
|
To:
|
<chairs@lists.oasis-open.org>
|
Cc:
|
"'Norman Walsh'" <ndw@nwalsh.com>,
"'Duane Nickull'" <dnickull@adobe.com>
|
Date:
|
30/10/2008 18:08
|
Subject:
|
RE: [chairs] Recommendations for Version Control
System!
|
It
doesn't look like CMIS is going to be looking at versioning in the
source-control sense any time soon (they mention
WebDAV as related work, but
not DeltaV).
I think the current stability and ubiquitous
deployment of Subversion makes
it the SHOULD case, and there has to be good
reason not to use it. It is
also valuable that distributed versioning systems
like git (I don't know
about Mercurial) have adapters in and out of
Subversion so, from my
preference for off-line use, I can have my cake
and eat it too, with or
without a local-machine hosting of Subversion.
There are also Subversion
gateways into Microsoft Team Server style systems,
such as CodePlex. (I
forget what I once knew about Eclipse, though
confident Subversion support
is there along with CVS.)
I am not so sure that a source-code versioning
system is all that
well-suited for standards development work, and
even building repositories
of sample documents related to conformance work.
If there is software
involved, that's a different matter.
An important consideration in using such a system
is whether it is hosted by
OASIS or not. The advantage of hosting by
OASIS is that the IPR rules and
considerations for contributions, whether by a TC
membership or public
submitters (similar to public commenters), would
presumably be handled for
anyone having write access, although there could
be open read access and a
web interface, features that Subversion hostings
provide for. Dealing with
submission provenance and curation is important
for TC work.
Finally, I think consideration of bug tracking is
valuable, as are
change-management support. I notice in my
own experience with errata for
the ODF specifications that a bug tracking system
is important in making
sure that we are attentive to public comments,
that in-TC counterparts of
comments are preserved and tracked, and that
tracking of the impact of
new-edition changes on existing approved standards
are managed properly.
Having tool support for this strikes me as very
important, and a
bug-tracking mechanism might be pressed into that
service rather well.
There appears to be too much friction in the
current Kavi functionality to
do tracking easily. A wiki can help, but
something more structured and
systematic, if set up with care, can be much more
easily used and the
content maintained reliably.
- Dennis
PS: I didn't know, until I started receiving posts
to this list, that a TC
Secretary is viewed somewhat like an unelected
committee officer as far as
OASIS lists and such are concerned. Makes
sense, just wasn't expecting it.
I will now see if my receiving the list allows
write privileges. (If there
is an archive, I haven't found it.)
Dennis E. Hamilton
------------------
NuovoDoc: Design for Document System
Interoperability
mailto:Dennis.Hamilton@acm.org | gsm:+1-206.779.9430
http://NuovoDoc.com http://ODMA.info/dev/ http://nfoWorks.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Duane Nickull [mailto:dnickull@adobe.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 19:05
To: Norman Walsh; chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [chairs] Recommendations for Version
Control System!
Let's see what CMIS brings.
;-)
On 28/10/08 6:25 PM, "Norman Walsh"
<ndw@nwalsh.com> wrote:
> azydron@xml-intl.com writes:
>> SVN, no ifs or buts! It is the only way
to go.
>
> Well, something more peer-to-peer like
Mercurial has advantages too.
> The ability to do commits when I'm on a plane
is very nice.
>
> That said, svn is probably the most
straightforward choice.
>
>
Be seeing you,
>
norm
--
**********************************************************************
Senior Technical Evangelist - Adobe Systems, Inc.
Duane's World TV Show - http://tv.adobe.com/#pg+1537
Blog - http://technoracle.blogspot.com
I am a Twit - http://twitter.com/duanechaos
Community Music - http://www.mix2r.com
My Band - http://www.myspace.com/22ndcentury
**********************************************************************
Unless stated otherwise above:
IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number
741598.
Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU