LuaForge Changes

[Andre Carregal <carregal@...>]

Hi everybody,

Since we have setup luaForge.net back in 2004 it seems to have become
an important resource for the Lua community. We currently have 1944
users, 477 projects and have received 56,7 million views over the
years. Unfortunately, last year we have had serious problems with
stability.

We have looked for ways to make our GForge installation more stable,
but after many frustrating months I feel that now have neither the the
resources nor the skills to keep LuaForge on GForge.

After discussing this issue with a number of people, including those
on the luaforge-devel list, I decided to move LuaForge from GForge,
splitting it into smaller services, freezing some, ending some, and
passing a number of services to other people.

While this may result in a less complete site, the simplicity should
help us keep it more stable and reliable than the current one.

LuaForge currently consists of a number of services, which jointly are
a bit too much to manage for a small group:

www.luaforge.net - a GForge installation with projects/files/people/trackers
<project>.luaforge.net - hosting of static projectname files
cvs.luaforge.net - CVS server for the projects
lists.luaforge.net - Mailman based lists for the projects

The new version of the site will split those services and freeze or
end some of them:

1) The catalog (www.luaforge.net) - A streamlined catalog of projects
with links to other services or static files. Yuri Takhteyev has
offered to set this up using Sputnik and to maintain it.

2) The archive (archive.luaforge.net) - A static archive of other
parts of the site, including all the released files and project
websites. Matthew Wild has offered to host and maintain it.

Several other services are still looking for candidates, in particular
the mailing lists (currently using mailman and a Python front end) and
CVS. If any of you want to assume any of them, please let me know. If
no one appears by the time the conversion is done, the two services
will be suspended and the corresponding archives offered on the static
site.

We plan to proceed in such a way that no project data would be lost,
so project owners do not need to rush to migrate right now, but can
wait to see whether the reduced services would be sufficient for their
needs.

I know this is not the perfect solution, but I do not want to risk any
more damage to the current users. I apologize for all of you who were
expecting more from the site, but I think this simplification will
help the new maintainers provide more consistent service.

I'd like to thank once more all the help I got during these years. In
particular from Paulo Fernando (the main support for GForge until
2008) and Alessandro Hecht, who alone restored the whole thing from
the October 2009 crash. My thanks also to IMPA for the hosting and
tech support during critical times and to TechWeb, Fábrica Digital,
FINEP and CNPq for the fundings during different periods.

My sincere gratefulness goes to the patience of the site members who
trusted their projects to be (in one way or another) on LuaForge and
the users who have had to deal with the interruptions along the way.

I has been a great way to learn about systems, projects and people
(including myself). Thanks indeed! :o)

Sincerely,

André