> what can I do to help with this situation going forward?
Spread the word that we need people who have experience with PHP and
Java, and who are willing to help us migrate LSR to another host.
> I must admit I feel I'm only partially clear on the goals and use of
> the LSR. Maybe if folks would list the various components of its
> functionality and pair to these the current thinking in terms of
> what should be kept vs improved vs retired, we could formulate a
> plan?
AFAICS, the LSR serves two purposes.
1. It is a collection of contributed showcases, presented as small
snippets, that helps users to find out what you can do with
LilyPond.
2. It is also used as a source for LilyPond documentation. In other
words, quite a large group of LSR snippets is directly integrated
into the NR, and some more are also accessible as a separate
document, see
https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.24/Documentation/snippets/index.html
Anybody can contribute; some people serve as 'LSR editors' and approve
snippets, which make them eventually publicly available. In most
cases, this approval process includes some minor editing.
For me, the most serious drawback of the LSR is that there is no
history preserved. If an editor removes a snippet, it is lost. My
idea is to use a git repository to keep track of all changes,
including the person's user name who actually did modify the code.
I like the current interface to contribute and/or modify snippets.
There are certainly areas where improvements are useful and/or
necessary, but in total it serves its purpose quite well IMHO.
Consequently, I suggest the following route – but please note that I'm
have no idea whether my suggested steps are actually feasible.
1. Set up a new machine to run the LSR code as-is.
2. Update the components as much as possible.
3. Provide an interface between the MySQL database code of LSR and a
git repository to push changes as soon as somebody hits the 'save'
button in the LSR interface.
AFAICS, this is the way of the least work. If this is done,
interested people can start with reimplementing LSR if there is a
desire to do so.
Werner
