On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 9:20 PM, Shane Curcuru <[email protected]> wrote: > I'd like to setup the homepage on whimsy.a.o to get semi-automatically > built, so that when new tools are deployed for use, they get displayed > on the homepage. Note: this is opt-in, and probably semi-automatic, so > we don't have the homepage breaking without a developer noticing first. > > My possibly naive concept is to annotate each script that we would link > to with a # comment on the second line of the script: > > # Wvisible:Category This is the link description > > Then have a tool script that crawls the www/ tree, and outputs a copy of > the homepage with auto-generated links put into Category sections, > similar to the current layout. > > Thoughts? Better ways to annotate?
Not sure it is worth it, but am welcome to be proven wrong. :-) I don't know of any prior art. The one thing I would be strongly opposed to is your specific suggestion above: allowing tools to write to the www tree, particularly a tree that enables the running of cgi scripts would be a security exposure. Now the front page could be a script itself. And with how fast machines are these days, it could even crawl the entire site on every request. > We are at the point that while we do have many different individual > tools, we also have a lot of useful tools that many different people > might be interested. Better publicizing them can help some Apache > communities. I agree with the statement of the problem above. I disagree that the effort required to add a single line to the home page is a significant inhibitor, but again, I welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong. I think the bigger problem is a social problem. We are all gun shy. We write scripts and mark them as test or don't publicize them and in many cases aren't even sure that they are a good idea. Then a percentage of them take off and build a following and take on a life of their own. I think we need to embrace the fact that most tools aren't mission critical, and may break occasionally. Obviously there are a few tools that are notable exceptions: * If the roster tool is broken for more than a day, the infrastructure team workload may go up * If the secretary workbench is broken for more than a few hours, the secretary will get understandably cranky. * If the board agenda tool is broken in the days leading up to a board meeting, quite a few people will get upset > -- > > - Shane > https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/resources - Sam Ruby
