I wanted to open a discussion about the future of the pdxruby app. Most of the people watching this list have either actively participated in the development of it or watched with above-average interest. I think this discussion is good to start here before we start asking the general list. So, the question is: what features do we need? What features do we want? Eric made the good point that it's supposed to be a learning experience... what technically-challenging (or common but kinda hard) things are we missing that we could benefit from implementing?
Aside from actual features in the app itself, I think it would be nice to have a little more infrastructure around the project. I don't want to make things too complex, but having trac, for instance, would be nice. Also, it would be nice to see the actual changes in the commit emails rather than just a list of the files that have changed. I don't know what's available for subversion regarding this, but for CVS, I've used CVSSpam ( http://www.badgers-in-foil.co.uk/projects/cvsspam/ ) which provides really nicely formatted emails.
I like the idea.One thing that I thought would be kinda cool would be to build a small polling system in. Something where we could post questions and let people answer on the site.
This is rather minor, but I think it would be nice to have a little more info in the user profiles (if people want to provide it). For instance, listing their IRC handles, IM contact info, link to website (not just RSS feed), etc. I know this can go in the description, but a lot of people wont think to provide it. Of course, this won't take more than a few minutes to add... if only I had commit access. ;~)What else? Anybody got some pet idea they want to hack on? Let's hear about it!
Also, I know most of us are developers not designers, but I really think a little bit of UI/L&F design could help things quite a bit. Right now the site just feels clunky. I'm not much of a designer, but I'd be happy to take a stab at it, at least.
Also, what is the Next Project we want to take on as a group? I still want to have a portfest, converting some awesome CPAN modules to Ruby, but that might take some planning.
I think the CPAN idea is great. Sounds like we should organize another hackfest soon. Let's try not to have this one on my wife's birthday, though, so I can make it.
Other ideas for projects and activities:
1. Documentation -- we could pick some area where docs are lacking and try to organize some collaborative efforts around it. For instance, not wanting to steal Lucas' thunder, but an nice complete Ruby cookbook would be a nice resource to provide (perhaps completing zenspider's work?).
2. Porting documentation/books -- that is, take a popular work form another language (for instance, I seem to recall someone started down this road with Higher Order Perl) and provide a translation of the Ruby equivalents.
3. Start some tutorial sessions -- it might be nice to put together a group of people who are interested in teaching others about Ruby and set up some basic classes
4. Evangelizing to other groups -- anyone want to go talk to any of the other dev groups in town?
5. I know that FOSCON was a huge success, so maybe putting together a group to start working on arrangements for something to top last year?!?
Just some thoughts that popped into my head while I was trying to avoid doing the java work I'm supposed to be working on...
Tom
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