[Savannah-hackers] Savannah software development plan

[Jaime E . Villate]

Hi Mathieu and Loic,
I've had some very interesting meetings with Derek and Frederik here at CERN;
they have gained a lot of experience with the Savannah software and they can
make some important contributions to its development. We have agreed on some
common plan of action (please feel free to propose any changes):

1- Remove the cron job that updates automatically the PHP scripts in
savannah.gnu.org and savannah.nongu.org.

Up to now, developers who commit changes to the repository have had root 
access to the server and can fix any problems immediately. The idea is
that from now on, we may accept contributions from other developers who do not
need to have root access or become familiar with the set up of our
server. When they commit changes to the repository, one of us (Loic, Mathieu,
Laurent or Jaime) will decide if we want to update the local copy of the PHP
scripts, and check whether they work correctly in our server.

If there are no objections, I'd like to do this by tomorrow.

2- Tag the current sate of the Savannah repository and make a first release of
GNU Savannah, uploading a tarball in the files area. 

In the past we have not worried about releases, but now that we have several
groups using our software in their sites and sending bug reports we should
implement a release policy.

I would like to do this as fast as possible so Derek and Frederik can start to
contribute for the next release. If nobody objects, I will assume the
responsibility of tagging and creating the tarball; but before I do it I will
check with Mathieu that we do not have any more immediate changes to
introduce.

3- Include Derek and Frederik in the list of Savannah developers. They have
both shown to be very knowledgeable and dedicated to the improvement of
Savannah; they have also agreed to transfer the copyright of their
contributions to the FSF.

If nobody objects, I'd due this right after steps 1 and 2.

I'm also preparing a document with the proposal for a new SQL table structure
that we have discussed with Frederik and Derek. This would be implemented for
the second release of Savannah. The discussion of that proposal and any other
changes after the first release should be done in the savannah-dev list.

Regards,
Jaime