Re: RPG 'CPAN' site -- RPG400-L

Hans,

It would be great to have someone of your caliber (I guess you are not
interested), Bob or any other person with worthwhile views and
experience as iSeries-toolkit administrators or developers to help guide
the project. It would work well to use a system similar to the Apache
voting system, where those that contribute help guide the project.

I have used both the CPAN site you refer to and Source Forge. Source
forge targets colaboration. CPAN is more like a bullitin board (ala
Rusty's). You can indeed search Source Forge, and if you wan't site
specific searching, there is always Google.

My experience with CPAN has been bad so maybe my view is tainted. The
search never works for me so I have to use Google. When I downloaded and
installed the Perl iSeries port it did not work. It took me several
hours to identify the problems and correct the build, which will not run
as delivered. I would be happy to share my findings but with who? I
can't submit a patch and there is no way to convey this to others. I
have not looked at the Python port.

Source forge supports forums, bug tracking, feature requests,
notification, and many other services. Along with these there is support
for CVS, a database, authorization, documentation, and more.

David Morris

>>> boldt@ca.ibm.com 03/01/02 06:41 AM >>>
David wrote:
> A couple of points on your response to Buck. It is not "David's" site.
>
> That is the most important part. I am currently the only
administrator,

Since you're the "administrator", that kind of makes it
"your" site!  But I accept your point that it's meant to be
a collaborative effort.

> but I would welcome the help and guidance of others. The
> iSeries-toolkit site strives to supply the foundation for an
> application
> framework. It could easily support vertical applications.  If you
> have an interest rate computation or other useful routines, I will
> give you developer access and let you check it in.
>
> I would hate to see the open-source initiative splinter at this point.
>
> And would urge you and Bob to consider working together with
> the existing open-source community. It would take a lot of work
> just to duplicate what Source Forge offers.

I think there's still a difference between what SourceForge
offers and what an "RPG Archive" site could offer.  Look at
CPAN (for Perl, at <http://www.cpan.org/>) or the Vaults of
Parnassus (for Python, at
<http://www.vex.net/parnassus/>).<~!B*+R^&>CPAN is an archive of much
Perl code.  VoP is an index site
for Python code.  Both provide search and locate capabilities.

On the other hand, SourceForge is a useful tool for the
collaborative development of software.  But not all open-
source code needs that model of development.  Some code can be
developed informally by one or two people, other projects may
need a more formal development process.

In other words, CPAN and VoP are where you go for the stable
released versions of software, SourceForge is where you go to
develop that software.

The way I see it, an RPG archive site would be a massive
directory or archive of all freely available code where you
could go to search for and locate the code you want.  That
site may well include links to sites like SourceForge where
you could find more current (and potentially less fully
debugged) code.  It may also include links to more small
scale efforts.  Whatever.

As I said in a previous note, the ideal situation would be
that whenever anyone asks how to do some particular task in
RPG, the answer most commonly given would be "Download
package WXYZ from the 'RPG Archive of Modules and
Procedures'".

BTW, for me personally, I have neither the time nor desire to
get deeply involved with this kind of thing.  For years, I've
tried to encourage more open-source efforts among the RPG
community, but whatever happens has to be organized and
managed by the RPG community, in my opinion.  And to be
brutally honest, I'm still not entirely convinced that open
source software can make much of an impact in this community.

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com