[erlang-questions] FOP (was: Re: Trace-Driven Development)

[Ulf Wiger]

On 8 Jun 2012, at 17:05, Michael Turner wrote:

> So if you say, with very little experience editing and managing wikis,
> "they can't do X", there's a very good chance you're wrong.

…sure, as with everything. And indeed I explicitly said "I won't
say that it *can't* be done with wikis, …"

As it happens, I do have experience editing and managing wikis,
and while I was perfectly able to view the history of individual pages,
and could also bring up an older revision of a particular page, I found
the lack of *baseline support* a distinct disadvantage for some uses.

For example, when we were doing iterative development, and using
wiki pages to reflect the architecture, usage and installation 
instructions, as well as the state of the project, the wikis usually
ended up reflecting only the most recent state - anything else was
simply too hard. We could reflect milestones across modules in
the code and in the issue tracker, but the wiki pages kept floating
on top. That's sometimes fine, but in the case of OTP, I personally
want to be able to browse around in a consistent set of pages for 
the particular release I'm using.

The wiki used in that particular case was Redmine's wiki.
I have experienced use of other wikis, e.g. MediaWiki, in
past development projects. They were great for keeping up
with peripheral stuff - how to set up test environments, useful
tricks, etc. I think OTP could use the wiki on github more.

The reason why I brought up the github wiki was that it obviously
should be able to do this, since the underlying storage is a git
repository, and github offers the ability to browse a tagged 
version of source code repositories. If they did the same for the
wiki, I'd have my baseline support.

(I document my own code with edown, which lets github render
edoc generated as markdown. It has the advantage that I can
browse documentation online that's consistent with the code
in the same view - not at all revolutionary, of course, but still
convenient.)

There used to be a wiki for Erlang: Trapexit. It is currently down.
Some people found it extremely useful, and others didn't. Some,
who would have been able to correct mistakes and add useful
insight, didn't want to create an account, log in and do the edits,
so we had to contact them, ask for their opinion, and try to relate
their knowledge on the wiki and forums. Others abused the 
service and had to be locked out.

ESL has said that they are working on a new community site.
Hopefully, we will all get to see it soon.

BR,
Ulf W

Ulf Wiger, Co-founder & Developer Advocate, Feuerlabs Inc.
http://feuerlabs.com