[Savannah-hackers] little howto

[Rudy Gevaert]

Log on to the savannah website, people who are part of the savannah
administration project (admins only I guess) will be able to moderate
projects.

When logged in, you will see on the left a link "Pending projects".
Click on it.

Now you will be taken to a page that lists all pending projects.  Thus
now about 400.  Maybe we should fix this, so it only shows the first
20.  As it takes ages to load the page.

You can read the text the project submitted.  But on this page it
does't line wrap (so it seems).  Per project you can click on the
"manage/edit registration " link.

If you accept a project (see furter for the guidelins to accept a
project). follow this link.  On the following page select the rigt
section (gnu/nongnu/gug), if the user requested an other system name,
change it to that, set the status to "active", set the public flag,
check if the license is correct. 

Then click on the first update button

I don't know -- I haven;t tested this new interface yet -- what
happens next, if you go to a next page or the current page is
reloaded.

Anyway, when the page is reloaded click the "send instruction" mail,
or push the back button and then click on the link.

If the project requested to be included into the gnu project, push
that link too.  Do this only if the project is complient with savannah
policy.


You can see if a project is already part of the gnu project by looking
on fencepost in /gd/maintainers.something (use find :)).

If you can't find it in there, you can use the link to ask
address@hidden if it is a gnu package.  If the user posted a mail
that rms dubbed his project gnu, you can believe it.

If you don't accept a project, don't use the button "delete project",
because it doesn't work.  (it didn't work with the old savanah, at
least).  To delete a project type the following as root on savannah:

sv_register_discard project_name --user="address@hidden" --comment="reason"

We have an emacs .el file for this, when using m-x sv_register_discad
it asks for projectname and reason and pasts the command above in the
buffer.  I start emacs locally, execute m-x eshell, and then ssh to
savannah as root.  I can then use this el file on  the machine
savannah.  I attached this file.

In this file we have several functions, that we use for answer to user
in a coherent way.  Also it saves us much typing.

sv-approve                         sv-approve-as-nongnu
sv-closing                         sv-closing-no-resubmit
sv-confusion-commercial-and-proprietary
sv-confusion-open-and-free         sv-opening
sv-problem-details                 sv-problem-fsf-address
sv-problem-gif                     sv-problem-gpl-info
sv-problem-gpl-two-only            sv-problem-java
sv-problem-lgpl-info               sv-problem-license-gplincompatible
sv-problem-license-mpl-alike       sv-problem-license-truncated
sv-problem-linux-vs-gnu            sv-problem-open-in-name
sv-problem-tarball                 sv-problem-uses-gnu-name
sv-reject-java-nonfree             sv-reject-nonfree-operating-system
sv-reject-proprietary              sv-term-project-mark-as-deleted
sv-term-project-pending-list
sv-term-project-registration-discard
sv-term-user-delete                sv-term-user-rename


I won't discuss them, you should read them your selves.  And use them
where appropriate.

This is how I moderate a project:

- I open the mailbox where all proejct registration emails go, and
  start replying.  Make sure to set the reply-to header to
  savannah-hackers mailinglist
- I pick the first project in my list that wasn't handled.
- I read the description, if no description was given do
  (sv-problem-details) and sv-closing.  If he doesn't understand the
  meaning of Free (as in Freedom) we explain it.  Also if he uses open
  (look for open in the name of the project too
  sv-problem-open-in-name), we also use sv-confusion-open-and-free.
  Also if he talks about "Linux" when he means the GNU/Linux operating
  system, we use sv-problem-linux-vs-gnu.  You can add all this in one
  mail and then discard the project. Also see if a nongnu project use
  gnu in name (sv-problem-uses-gnu-name) I check if the user
  mentionned some dependencies.  E.g. it uses java.  If it doesn't run
  on a FREE java virtual machine, I discard the project.  Also if his
  project relies on nonfree software, it is also discarded.  If it
  only runs on a nonfree OS, also discard.  Always close the project
  you discard with sv-closing .  The user has to resubmit his project
  if anything wasn't ok.  

if the project still is OK then:

- If no tarball was given, I ask for one (sv-problem-tarball) and
  close the mail with (sv-closing)
- If a tarball was given I download it. 

Then the license check, most projects fail on this:

- untar the tarball
- check if the COPYING file is present and that it is intact
  (sv-project-license-truncated).  Make sure the new address of the
  FSF is being used.
- check if every source file has the license header in it.  It must be
  correctly applied.  
- check if no gif files are present

Also note that we don't host a GNU/Linux os variant.  We don't accept
projects with a gpl imcompatible license




-- 
Rudy Gevaert                address@hidden              
Web page                    http://www.webworm.org
GNU/Linux for schools       http://www.nongnu.org/glms
Savannah hacker             http://savannah.gnu.org