<div dir="ltr">This is what I sent to Francesco<div><br></div><div>****************************************************************************************</div><div><br></div><div><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="5"><b>Building
The Erlang Community</b></font></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><b style="font-size:large;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">Background</b></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Erlang
has long lacked a solid community core to act as a place where users
can discover existing modules and include them in their projects.</font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>rebar
</b></font><font face="Georgia, serif">now provides the standard
mechanism to include external dependencies - this proposal is about
making erldocs the standard place to discover community
contributions.</font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="4"><b>Proposal
1</b></font></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">The
proposal is that people who publish open source Erlang modules on
GitHub be able to have them listed on erldocs.</font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">The
process would be two part:</font></p>
<ul>
<li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">commit
a page called </font><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>ERLDOCS.terms</b></font><font face="Georgia, serif">
to github in the root next to </font><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>README.md</b></font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">submit
the URL to a page on erldocs</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">erldocs
would sook the github page into a community section</font></p>
</li></ul>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><br>
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">The
structure of the </font><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>ERLDOCS.terms</b></font><font face="Georgia, serif">
file is simple tagged tuples, something like:</font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>{name,
"Starling"}.</b></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>{license,
"EPL"}.</b></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>{description,
"Unicode support for Erlang"}.</b></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>{details,
"A C-Port wrapped around the ICU library for unicode"}.</b></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>{status,
"production"}. % alpha | beta | production</b></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>{rebar,
{version, "1"}, {starling, {git,
"git://</b></font><font color="#000080"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://github.com/hypernumbers/starling.git" target="_blank"><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>github.com/hypernumbers/starling.git</b></font></a></u></span></font><font face="Courier New, monospace"><b>","master"}}}.</b></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="4"><b>Proposal
2</b></font></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Dale
Harvey originally intended that erldocs should include the ability
for members of the community to annotate the official documents with
examples, links to tutorials etc, etc.</font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">erldocs
be so extended (by use of Disqus or other standard commenting
systems)</font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="4"><b>Requirements
For Success</b></font></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Erldocs
'failed' last time out because the OTP team changed the way documents
were generated, and Dale Harvey moved on from an Erlang shop to
Mozilla.</font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">In
order for this to work Erlang Solutions has to commit to:</font></p>
<ul>
<li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">erldocs
being the official community repository for Erlang documentation -
linked to directly from </font><font color="#000080"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://erlang.org/" target="_blank"><font face="Georgia, serif">erlang.org</font></a></u></span></font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">production
of these documents needs to be integrated into the OTP Team's
release schedule</font></p></li></ul>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="4"><b>Modalities</b></font></font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">If
Erlang Solutions so agree the next stage would be to approach a
number of suppliers of top-notch Erlang open source and sign them up
for launch. My working list would be:</font></p>
<ul>
<li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Erlang
Solutions</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Basho</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Erlware</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Mats
Cronquist</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Richard
Carlsson</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Yaws</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Mochiweb</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Nitrogen</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Cowboy</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Web
Machine</font></p>
</li><li><p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Hypernumbers</font></p>
</li></ul>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><br>
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">There
would need to be consultation with the launch group regarding the
structure and elements of the term file.</font></p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm"><font face="Georgia, serif">Once
they were onboard and the production cycle had been tested - an open
launch on the mailing list.</font></p></div><div><br></div><div><div>****************************************************************************************</div></div><div><br></div><div>The key point is that a community is only a real community if you choose to join it. I was 'joined' to the Agner community (and there have been other attempts, Erlware, CEAN, etc) but they don't stick.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Gordon</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 17 February 2014 22:28, Mark Allen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mallen@alertlogic.com" target="_blank">mallen@alertlogic.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="">On 2/17/14 4:21 PM, "Garrett Smith" <<a href="mailto:g@rre.tt">g@rre.tt</a>> wrote:<br>
>> On 2/17/14 1:51 PM, "Vixo" <<a href="mailto:gordon@hypernumbers.com">gordon@hypernumbers.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>>>My suggestion would be a manifest file of Erlang terms at the root level<br>
>>>of a GitHub page (they will *all* be on GitHub) that can be polled and<br>
>>>turned into a static site. The logical thing to do would be combine thus<br>
>>>with the revived erldocs site IMHO (as I have said to Francesco)<br>
<br>
</div><div class="">>Does this require that all of github be crawled?<br>
<br>
</div>No. I'm pretty sure we can segment the crawl to only projects with some X<br>
threshold of Erlang. (I'll have a slice without so much rat in it. [0])<br>
<div class=""><br>
>Would a github based index make sense? Complete with a liberal pull<br>
>request policy?<br>
<br>
</div>Most likely, yes, using github pages with a nice custom domain would be a<br>
Good Thing for this type of project. The code to do the crawl and build<br>
the index should be open source too, imo.<br>
<br>
Mark<br>
<br>
[0]:<br>
<a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python's_Flying_Circus#The_Money_Program" target="_blank">http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python's_Flying_Circus#The_Money_Program</a><br>
me_.5B3.03.5D<br>
<br>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>---<br>Gordon Guthrie<br>CEO <a href="http://vixo.com" target="_blank">vixo.com</a><br>@gordonguthrie<br>+44 (0) 7776 251669 (in Bonnie Scotland!)<br><br>vixo is made in Scotland from electrons
</div>