[MLton] past and future of mlton.org

Adam Goode adam at spicenitz.org
Tue Mar 2 12:49:36 PST 2010 

Moving to Google Code sounds like a great idea. I can tell you that
Fedora's interpretation of MLton's license is "MIT", so that is
compatible with code hosting.

I also think it would be a great chance to migrate to Mercurial.


Adam


On 03/02/2010 01:07 PM, Matthew Fluet wrote:
> As some may have noticed or inferred, there was an issue with
> mlton.org (website, mailing lists, SVN, etc.) over the weekend.  The
> long and short of it is that there was some kind of disk problem with
> the mlton.org hosting service, but they were able to restore the
> virtual private server (VPS) without any data loss and all services
> appear to be functioning normally.
> 
> Nonetheless, it provided the opportunity to consider and to experiment
> with alternative hosting solutions.  Stephen was able to put together
> a Google Groups for mlton.org that could host mlton at mlton.org and
> mlton-user at mlton.org and also a Google Sites for mlton.org that could
> host www.mlton.org, and for a short time over the weekend had DNS
> configured to point there.  Below is the thread of discussion about
> moving the mlton.org services to an alternative hosting solution.
> 
> I think that Stephen's argument is correct: administering a VPS is a
> significant overhead, and it holds things back because no one has the
> time to do the admin right.  (And, even if someone had the time to do
> the admin at the present time, they may not in the future.)  The big
> advantage of hosting under Google (or Sourceforge, or ...) is that the
> admin is amortized over all hosted projects, to the point where
> individual project developers need not concern themselves with the
> admin.  Switching to a DVCS was mentioned on the mailing list a few
> months ago; its something to consider again, since a major drawback to
> switching was the up-front admin of setting up a different VCS.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com>
> Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:17:53 -0500
> Subject: [MLton] mlton.org is OK
> 
> The hosting company is bringing the server back online right now.  No data
> loss.
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com>
> Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:37:29 -0500
> Subject: [MLton] mlton.org is back online
> 
> I've changed the DNS settings for mlton.org, www.mlton.org, and
> svn.mlton.org to point back at the VPS, 69.55.226.86.
> 
> If your DNS has got the stale IP, you can check the web site at
> 
>  http://69.55.226.86/
> 
> It looks fine to me.
> 
> I haven't pointed the mail server back to the VPS yet, because I think it
> might be an opportune time to switch over to the google groups stuff that I
> set up.  It has a lot of advantages (easier management, better reliability,
> better archiving) and no real disadvantages that I can see (other than old
> messages aren't in the same archive, but maybe that could even be fixed).
> 
> In general, I'd like to get out of administering my own VPS, which I think
> wastes time and holds things back (because no one has time to do the admin
> right).  I've already done it for nameserver and mail.  I think it could be
> worth it in the long run to switch the MLton wiki over to google sites too.
> But that obviously takes some work.
> 
> The only other service that I can think of that mlton.org provides is the
> SVN repo (and web interface).  It would be cool if we could move that to a
> reasonable turn-key hosted solution too.  We might also consider upgrading
> to a more modern version control system.  I'm a big fan of hg, having used
> it for a couple of years now.
> 
> Anyways, I'll defer to the wishes of the group, but my feeling is that
> moving away from the VPS and toward a more group-managed and hosted solution
> seems better.
> 
> The only immediate decision that needs to be made is whether to migrate the
> mail to google groups (basically, invite all the old members to join), or
> change the mail handling back to the VPS.
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Henry Cejtin <henry.cejtin at sbcglobal.net>
> Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:12:09 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: Re: [MLton] mlton.org is back online
> 
> Excellent  news  about  the MLton data still being around.  I completely
> agree that lots of the stuff (like google groups)  makes  sense  in  the
> generic  cloud  (although  I  think  that  backups of the mail, wiki and
> repository  are  worth  doing  at  various  local  machines   just   for
> diversifying the risk).
> 
> I have never used mercurial (A.K.A. hg?) but I have certainly heard good
> things about it.  What are the advantages over SVN?
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com>
> Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:51:44 -0500
> Subject: Re: [MLton] mlton.org is back online
> 
> One advantage is that all repositories are created equal -- there's nothing
> special about the central repository, other than the convention that that's
> where all patches end up eventually.  Using this fact, one can set up
> arbitrary workflows and easily work outside the central repository.  E.g.
> when mlton.org was down for a few days, people could still commit and share
> patches with each other.
> 
> Also, it's trivial to install and maintain repositories.
> 
> On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 6:12 PM, Henry Cejtin <henry.cejtin at sbcglobal.net>wrote:
>> Excellent  news  about  the MLton data still being around.  I completely
>> agree that lots of the stuff (like google groups)  makes  sense  in  the
>> generic  cloud  (although  I  think  that  backups of the mail, wiki and
>> repository  are  worth  doing  at  various  local  machines   just   for
>> diversifying the risk).
> 
>> I have never used mercurial (A.K.A. hg?) but I have certainly heard good
>> things about it.  What are the advantages over SVN?
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Matthew Fluet <matthew.fluet at gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:24:21 -0500
> Subject: Re: [MLton] mlton.org is back online
> 
> On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com> wrote:
>> I haven't pointed the mail server back to the VPS yet, because I think it
>> might be an opportune time to switch over to the google groups stuff that I
>> set up.  It has a lot of advantages (easier management, better reliability,
>> better archiving) and no real disadvantages that I can see (other than old
>> messages aren't in the same archive, but maybe that could even be fixed).
> 
> It looks like importing mailing list archives is an oft-requested, but
> unsupported feature of GoogleGroups.  Exporting would be another issue
> (if one wanted to take the Google Group archive somewhere else),
> though could probably be done with sufficient web-scraping (messages
> have a "Show Original" link, so one could accumulate all the raw
> text).
> 
>> In general, I'd like to get out of administering my own VPS, which I think
>> wastes time and holds things back (because no one has time to do the admin
>> right).
> 
> Agreed.
> 
>> I've already done it for nameserver and mail.  I think it could be
>> worth it in the long run to switch the MLton wiki over to google sites too.
>> But that obviously takes some work.
> 
>> The only other service that I can think of that mlton.org provides is the
>> SVN repo (and web interface).  It would be cool if we could move that to a
>> reasonable turn-key hosted solution too.  We might also consider upgrading
>> to a more modern version control system.
> 
> One option is to go with Google Code's project hosting.
> 
> Some advantages:
> * SVN or Mercurial for project code
>  * web interface (google custom, not ViewCVS)
> * Project wiki with a subset of MoinMoin markup (would make copying
> existing wiki relatively easy)
> * Integrated issue tracker
> 
> Some disadvantages:
> * Possible code license issue; Google Code requires choosing one of a
> small number of open source licenses, including MIT License and New
> BSD License
> * Project membership iff code access and wiki access; i.e., no
> fine-grain permissions.  [Probably not a major issue; few wiki edits
> from non developers.]
> * Project wiki loses some of our useful MoinMoin extensions (links to
> SVN revisions/files, (good) SML code formatting, SML code pulled from
> SVN, ...)
> * Dispersal of URLs: mlton.org for mailing lists, mlton.org for one
> site, mlton.googlecode.com/ for source repository,
> code.google.com/p/mlton for project wiki, issue tracker, etc.
> 
> I suspect that the similar sets of pros/cons would arise from any
> hosting service.  SourceForge, for which MLton still has a project
> presence, would be another logical choice.  Since we left, they do
> support a variety of features:
> * CVS/SVN/Git/Mercurial/Bazzar
> * MediaWiki
> * Mailman mailing lists  (Did we import mail into the SourceForge mailing list?)
> * VHOST
> 
>>  I'm a big fan of hg, having used
>> it for a couple of years now.
> 
> I've been using Git a little bit, enough to see some of the advantages
> of a DVCS, but not enough to argue it over other systems.
> 
>> Anyways, I'll defer to the wishes of the group, but my feeling is that
>> moving away from the VPS and toward a more group-managed and hosted solution
>> seems better.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
>> The only immediate decision that needs to be made is whether to migrate the
>> mail to google groups (basically, invite all the old members to join), or
>> change the mail handling back to the VPS.
> 
> I'd vote to change the mail handling back to the VPS for the short
> term, and then do a single switch of everything.
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com>
> Date: Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 10:23 PM
> Subject: Re: [MLton] mlton.org is back online
> 
>> * Dispersal of URLs: mlton.org for mailing lists, mlton.org for one
>> site, mlton.googlecode.com/ for source repository,
>> code.google.com/p/mlton for project wiki, issue tracker, etc.
> 
> 
> This one isn't so bad.  We can make XXX.mlton.org aliases.
> 
>>> The only immediate decision that needs to be made is whether to migrate the
>>> mail to google groups (basically, invite all the old members to join), or
>>> change the mail handling back to the VPS.
>>
>> I'd vote to change the mail handling back to the VPS for the short
>> term, and then do a single switch of everything.
> 
> All right.  I switch the MX record back to mlton.org.  It might take up to a
> week for some things to catch up.  I await further discussion and a
> consensus from the group, at which point I will update the DNS as
> appropriate.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> MLton mailing list
> MLton at mlton.org
> http://mlton.org/mailman/listinfo/mlton


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