Re: Adaforge?

[Jerrid Kimball <jerrid@kimball.co>]

Hello

We've absolutely discussed exactly this on IRC[1] and had extensive 
discussion of what a site of this calibre would include. I have been 
interested in community building for longtime[2], but have really lacked 
the time necessary to write the tools for it. I hadn't considered 
ranking software by perceived safety.  I already have an instance of GNU 
Mailman setup for Dragonlace (a fantastic project bringing GNAT's 
capabilities to modern BSDs) and my own website.  I've also offered to 
host repositories as well albeit the process is not automated and only 
DragonLace and an RM Reformatter[3] tool are hosted there.

What I'm saying is that there's clearly a desire to make something like 
this; I know there is support for it on IRC.  One of the biggest 
problems facing a new-comer is finding libraries.  I still plan to 
create a freshmeat like listing of Ada code.

In the meantime, the best part of the site is Planet Ada! which is 
mostly the Thomas Locke show; I recently rethemed it, but it could use 
more Ada blogs.

Cheers


[1] #ada on irc.freenode.net
[2] I even have a website ada.cx. CX became a backronym for Community 
Exchange. Members of [1] contributed ideas for the tld acronym expansion.
[3] Because the yellow 1990s design of the RM makes normal people vomit, 
the idea was to make the RM more approachable and to fit into a themed 
website.  Oliver Kleinke has graciously spent his time to make it happen.

On 04/28/2012 09:14 AM, mockturtle wrote:
> Dear.all,
> I have some crazy thoughts that I would like to share with you... :-)
>
> Recently, a post on the LinkedIn group "Ada Programming Language," made me think that an ingredient that can help the spreading of a programming language is a variety of libraries.  I confess :-) that sometimes I use Ruby and in the past I worked also in PERL (but only with version 4! :-) and I found it very convenient to have access to many libraries (of variegate quality, to be honest) ready to use.
>
> I understand that some of us write their own libraries (I see every now and then announcements on this group), so I was wondering if it could be worth to try to collect all this stuff in a centralized place, kind of "rubyforge" for Ruby.  I have a faint memory of a "adaforge.com," but it seems that the domain has no owner currently.  I also have an half a memory of some half-sleeping Ada software repositories, but I could be wrong.
>
> Maybe it would be cool if the site could offer some hosting with tools like forum, mailing lists, ... (i.e., like rubyforge or sourceforge), but since there are already few repositories around, it would be nice if the site could also act as a "portal" toward other repositories.
>
>    [ An example of what I meant in the last sentence: suppose you have your project Cool_Ada_Library registered on sourceforge, instead of moving the whole project to adaforge, you could register  Cool_Ada_Library to adaforge as an "external" project.  Adaforge will handle your project as any other project, but it will show that is externally hosted by, for example, showing the sourceforge logo somewhere ]
>
> A special feature of adaforge (related with the "safe-oriented" nature of Ada) could be that each project will have a "certification" about the "safety" (in the sense you like) of the software.  For example, the lowest level could be given to  projects with no test procedures, an higher level to projects with full-coverage test, and maybe the highest level to projects checked with Spark.
>
> Of course, you could object that I can register my project on some generic site like sourceforge, but I think that a specific site could give to Ada projects a better visibility.  (Actually, some languages like PERL and Ruby have their own specialized open repositories).
>
> So, those were my wishes, how can we make them true?  Well, there are few questions that need an answer
>
> * I am not aware about a central repository for Ada open source software, but maybe I just did not find it. Are you aware of some initiative like the one I just described?
>
> * Maybe some of the current repositories could be improved to promote them to create this adaforge service.  Is this feasible?
>
> * Another option is to create the service from scratch, finding some good guy/girl that can host and maintain the site.  I work in a University and I think I would not have many problems to ask for some space on our servers, but I have no experience with building and maintaining open source repositories, so I cannot promise that I will do all by myself...
>
> That's all, folks.  Just do not flame me too strongly... ;-)
>
> Riccardo