[Rule] what's next?

[chris at idlelion.net]

Manually quoted. Does anyone know why pine won't quote messages from 
Rule-list properly?

On Wed, 22 Aug 2007, M. Fioretti wrote:
On Wed, August 22, 2007 5:08 pm, chris at idlelion.net wrote:
>> ...my account is blocked.

> This is normal, I have to enable it first and will do it tonight from 
> home.

The web page needs to be fixed because it says accounts do not need to be 
aproved.

>> As for things to do, installing FC5 doesn't exactly seem "up to date" 
>> to me, especially with F8T1 already out. I know it would be a ton of 
>> work up front, but might it make more sense to base RULE on a more 
>> stable platform like RHEL or CentOS?

> The "mission" of RULE is to provide the means to use already packaged 
> and modern desktop software on limited hardware. This, and historical 
> reasons not relevant now, is why RULE is based on Fedora. Centos, RHEL, 
> or other distros which are conceived with a much longer release cycle 
> don't match this profile that well.

> According to the "mission", yes, we should be working on FC8 test right 
> now, so the first thing to do is to restart to release slinky for each 
> new version of Fedora. The problems is simply that, due to lack of time 
> and other things, we simply stopped at FC5...

CentOS and RHEL, while they do not have the latest versions of the latest 
packages, are current (up to date), well-supported and as I'm sure you 
know, use the same package management tools. Red Hat back-ports security 
patches for all included packages. That is an incredible resource that 
Rule could take advantage of. It seems there isn't the manpower in place 
for Rule to keep up to date with Fedora and the 12 to 18 months between 
RHEL releases seems more compatible with our resources, at least so far.

With two major releases per year as the claimed release frequency of 
Fedora, and the track record of Rule, keeping up to date with the 
fast-moving target of Fedora seems unrealistic from here. I hope I'm 
wrong.

>> is it helpful for me to try to use what's in place for making
>> newer versions of the installer

> You mean starting to port slinky for FC5 to FC8 testing? Nothing would
> make me happier, as far as RULE is concerned. Tons of thanks in advance
> if you can do that. With respect to this:

The main reason I'm writing: NO! I do not intend to offer to take this on 
now. I meant to ask if it will help the project for me to install FC5 
using Rule on my old laptop and report my results. Meaning that someone 
will take my information and use it to update the installer for F8.

I cannot commit to taking on that project now. Further, unless a team 
steps up to do that porting and commits to keep doing it going forward, 
doing it once seems to me like a fun exercise, but not a useful project.

>> I'm happy to HTML-ize text files for uploading, and do some editing if
>> desired, once my account works.

> the main reason for it is to make it as easy as possible to you or any
> other new member to pick up and/or customize slinky for their needs. My
> goal/hope is to have in place as soon as possible on the website all the
> documents that explain step by step slinky's architecture and how to do
> build it from scratch.

If we want to promote the use of Rule with end users as opposed to 
developers, slinky has to be easy to use and have good documentation. 
Personally, I'd like to avoid customization at all costs. I want it to 
work so I can use it. I don't want to have to know its architecture until 
I want to improve it.

> Of course, if you feel that getting your hands dirty asap with porting
> the FC5 code, rather than re-uploading existing outdated docs, is a
> better way to end up with both slinky for FC8 _and_ current 
> documentation as said above... thank you in advance, again, for doing 
> it!

ANYTHING would be better than uploading outdated docs. Outdated documents 
should be updated (at least to put a big red OUT OF DATE on top) or 
deleted; but again, I cannot commit to any development time with my 
current schedule.

Chris