On 29/11/2011 Rob Weir wrote:
==Option 1: Remain at OSUOSL== We could remain with OSUOSL hosting. However, the existing site is very unstable.
This would be best both for short and long term. In the short term, it provides continuity of service and it doesn't break existing links. In the long term, the Drupal instance can be updated and extended (it's not easy, but it is something that would have fairly high chances of success) to get it to be something like the new model (distributed repositories) you describe in step 5.
An important point that everybody seems to miss is that the instability of the current Extensions site http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/ is, very likely, unrelated to Drupal. The underlying Drupal instance is rather sound (and it perfectly managed to sustain the traffic in 2010, which should not be significantly different from 2011); from the behavior of the site, it definitely seems to me that the instability is due to other components, like the caching server (Varnish) in front of it or other caching mechanisms.
A second very important point is that we need to get the Extensions and Templates source code (two different codebases) under the SGA; while Drupal itself is GPL, Thorsten Bosbach while working at Oracle created a lot of custom PHP code for the two sites. This code, as far as I know, has never been released. Access to the source code is a prerequisite for any possible analysis/improvement of the website.
==Option 2: Move Critical extensions to stable host==
Indeed, as you write, this would be an extreme option.
==Option 3: Clone OSUOSL repositories to another host==
This is not significantly different from Option 1; i.e., if there are other hosting options available the mere cloning of the site would not take long, but again the problem is not with the site but with caching.
Note that, since the Templates site has already been ported to Drupal 6 using the so called "code-driven development" technique, that source code would allow to install an empty pre-configured clone of the Templates site anywhere. This would be extremely useful for testing.
==Option 4: Host repositories elsewhere, using new UI==
As I used to say, everybody who thinks that the Extensions or Templates sites can be replaced easily has never tried submitting a template! Thorsten did a lot of customization work on the two sites; any replacement would provide a largely inferior user experience.
==Option 5: Re-architect the Repositories== This is the option I personally favor for long term. ... This would allow multiple repositories to look and behave identically from the data perspective.
This is an interesting long term solution indeed, but I see it feasible as a (complex) version of Option 1-3; i.e., we obtain the current codebase with the aim of updating it and extending it in this direction.
The other thing this approach does is separate the extension metadata from the actual licensed extension. If we wanted to have a canonical repository of registered extensions, but without actually hosting or storing the extensions, then that should be OK. We're hosting URL's to resources. We're not distributing code.
This would offer some advantages, but I see advantages in offering hosting for extensions too. The current Extensions site offers both options (host there or externally), but if I recall correctly some automatic mechanisms, like autogeneration of the update URL, only work if the local hosting is used.
Regards, Andrea.
