Forum: Cfengine Help Subject: Re: Cfengine Help: Once more unto the code bridge: repository Author: zzamboni Link to topic: https://cfengine.com/forum/read.php?3,19727,19751#msg-19751
Mark Burgess Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 4. A simple easy to read interface (I found github > mostly noise and > couldn't actually find the code in it!!) I would like to expand on this. GitHub is a many-faceted tool, so it depends on where and how you look at it. Looking at the "raw" page for the repository that Aleksey set up (https://github.com/cfengine/contrib ), I agree it may be a bit intimidating for someone who is not very familiar with github. It's an interface equivalent to the "project" pages on sourceforge.net, bitbucket.org, or any other code-hosting site. It's meant mostly for developers who are familiar with how things work. However, github also has built-in wikis associated with each project, which can be much more user-friendly. See here for an example: https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/wiki . The great thing about wikis in github (IMO, as a developer) is that they are git repositories in themselves, which means they are easy to check out and update offline, without having to go through a web interface. Additionally, github has a feature called "GitHub Pages" (http://pages.github.com/ ), which essentially allows you to host arbitrary content associated with a project or user. For example, my main web page at http://zzamboni.org/ is hosted by github, its contents is automatically grabbed from my repository at https://github.com/zzamboni/zzamboni.github.com . Some of my project pages, such as http://zzamboni.org/grabcartoons/ or http://zzamboni.org/copperexport/ are also hosted by github, and their content is served from a branch in the corresponding code repositories at https://github.com/zzamboni/grabcartoons and https://github.com/zzamboni/copperexport respectively. And GitHub even makes it possible to host the pages at custom domains, just by placing a special file in the repository containing the domain at which the page should be hosted. And finally, lest I forget, GitHub also has a code-snippet-sharing tool at http://gist.github.com/. This is where I host most of the code that I include in my blog, since it allows me to embed the snippets, nicely formatted and syntax-highlighted. I'm not saying that we should use github, since it comes with the implicit requirement that people use git for version control, and as much as I like it, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, so to speak (although github supports a subversion interface to repositories: https://github.com/blog/644-subversion-write-support , you get the most benefits when you use git directly). What I am saying is that it is entirely possible (and quite easy) to create nice-looking pages on github, nicely integrated with custom domains. As I suggested some time ago, for example, it would be entirely possible for Cfengine AS to host the COPBL page at (for example) copbl.cfengine.org, with a web page that looks exactly the same as it does today, and with an associated github repository that people could checkout, and if desired, fork and submitted as "pull requests". Of course, the repository owner decides which pull requests are merged back into the main repository, but it's a nice way of handling code contributions. People can even comment on the submitted patches, providing a built-in discussion forum that is directly associated with each contribution. Incidentally, the GitHub people just released a "GitHub Features" page that nicely describes most of what's available: https://github.com/features/ And before you ask, I don't work for GitHub, I'm just an extremely satisfied user :) _______________________________________________ Help-cfengine mailing list Help-cfengine@cfengine.org https://cfengine.org/mailman/listinfo/help-cfengine
