Re: Moving to a new PEAR website

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 10:31 PM, Michael Gauthier <mike@silverorange.com> wrote: > On 2011-05-04 14:35, Martin Jansen wrote: >> >> On 03.05.11 16:23, Michael Gauthier wrote: >>> >>> I feel like PEAR2 has a boot-strapping issue. No one contributes to >>> PEAR2 infrastructure because no one uses PEAR2. No one uses PEAR2 >>> because the infrastructure is not there. I thought moving the website >>> would help this, but it could be the wrong decision. >>> >>> You also need to be enlightened to contribute to PEAR1. The process for >>> contributing to PEAR1 has too much friction, and the existing docs are >>> poorly written and difficult to find. >> >> Not that it matters much, but I believe that the existing documentation >> enabled more people to contribute packages back in the day than a fancy >> UI design for the PEAR website.  The manual may be poorly written from a >> native speaker's POV, but at least people get a general clue about how >> things work. > >> > Perhaps I was a bit harsh here. The largest problem with the PEAR docbook > documentation is the organization. There's a deep hierarchy, and no search. > It's hard to find what you're looking for unless you already know where to > look. Many of the sections should be flattened into longer pages. > > For people who are just getting started, not being able to locate the > getting started documentation is a problem. > > Though PEAR did have a large number of contributions in the past, the number > of contributors has dropped considerably. What are your thoughts on why > contributions have dropped off and how we could bring them back up? Is there a way to query docbook? I have no idea, I'm a docbook-newb. Seriously asking. Like to traverse it and to programmatically read entries? > >> What I am wondering is if it would not be possible to merge PEAR 1 and >> PEAR 2 into a single web property?  I doubt it would be much work to >> extend the manual so that each page was clearly marked as "This is for >> PEAR 1" or "This is for PEAR 2".  And you folks could reuse the bug >> tracker, the package uploading infrastructure and probably even parts of >> PEPr.  The pearweb code may be ugly and hard to maintain by today's >> standards, but it works and provides plenty of content. >> > It is possible to merge PEAR1 and PEAR2 into a single web property. The > problem is the PEAR1 website doesn't really have any maintainers right now, > much less active developers to work on features. > > As a side note, PEAR2 obviates the old package upload process. Contributors > will release packages from the command-line. > > > Cheers, > Mike > > -- > PEAR Development Mailing List (http://pear.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > >