Gaphor Maintainer Needed?

[Dan Yeaw]

Hi Gaphor Team,

First of all, great job on Gaphor! I have been looking for an open 
source modeling tool, and this is by far the best. It is lightweight, 
has good usability, looks great - and it is all in Python which is fun. 
I also like that UML gaphor model is generating the python to provide 
support for UML.

My name is Dan, and I work as a Systems Engineer. I do a lot of modeling 
in SysML for my work and I have been looking for ways to give back to 
the FLOSS community. It looks like Gaphor is no longer actively being 
maintained, and I would be willing to take over as the maintainer or a 
co-maintainer if others still want to be involved.

Some thoughts on things that I think might needed to be worked on and 
future vision:

 1. Make sure that the installation process is really simple for users
    using the latest Python versions.
      * Possibly switch from easy_install to pip since it is now the
        recommended package installer.
      * Ensure that Python 2.7 and 3.6 are fully supported, possibly
        move from PyGTK to PyGObject as part of this. PyGTK gave me a
        challenge to get Gaphor running in a virtualenv.
 2. Add support for SysML and other modeling languages where there is
    demand (BPMN?)
 3. Provide hosting on an open source environment, and better integrate
    the source control, website, and bugtracker. Possibly move from
    GitHub, Sourceforge, Google Groups, and Lighthouse to GitLab and
    GitLab Pages.
 4. Add support for diagram types that limit the types of elements on
    each type, customize toolbars based on diagram type opened.

These are just some thoughts, but I open to other priorities or visions 
for the project going forward. Are you interested in having my 
involvement? Arjan, I could definitely use some mentoring as I come up 
to speed, if that is something you are willing to do. I am sure I am 
going to have questions and it would be great to have your continued 
involvement to help guide where the project heads.

So is Gaphor pronounced Guh-aphor like GNU (guh-new), or Gaph-or like gaff?


Cheers!
Dan Yeaw

[Arjan Molenaar]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for having interest in this little app :). See my comments below.

> On 17 Apr 2017, at 15:52, Dan Yeaw <dan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Gaphor Team,
>
> First of all, great job on Gaphor! I have been looking for an open
> source modeling tool, and this is by far the best. It is lightweight,
> has good usability, looks great - and it is all in Python which is fun.
> I also like that UML gaphor model is generating the python to provide
> support for UML.
>
> My name is Dan, and I work as a Systems Engineer. I do a lot of modeling
> in SysML for my work and I have been looking for ways to give back to
> the FLOSS community. It looks like Gaphor is no longer actively being
> maintained, and I would be willing to take over as the maintainer or a
> co-maintainer if others still want to be involved.

I have not used UML in quite a while. Apart from an occational update (and maybe spin it up on a Linux VM) I am not planning to do anything with it in the foreseeable future.

> Some thoughts on things that I think might needed to be worked on and
> future vision:
>
> 1. Make sure that the installation process is really simple for users
> using the latest Python versions.
> * Possibly switch from easy_install to pip since it is now the
> recommended package installer.
> * Ensure that Python 2.7 and 3.6 are fully supported, possibly
> move from PyGTK to PyGObject as part of this. PyGTK gave me a
> challenge to get Gaphor running in a virtualenv.

It would be awesome if you can pull it off.
I’ve done a little work to lift the code base to use GTK+3, but there are quite some (custom) widgets that need updating.

> 2. Add support for SysML and other modeling languages where there is
> demand (BPMN?)
> 3. Provide hosting on an open source environment, and better integrate
> the source control, website, and bugtracker. Possibly move from
> GitHub, Sourceforge, Google Groups, and Lighthouse to GitLab and
> GitLab Pages.

That sounds okay. Ot just leave it at GitHub (this will possibly draw more attention than Gitlab).

> 4. Add support for diagram types that limit the types of elements on
> each type, customize toolbars based on diagram type opened.
>
> These are just some thoughts, but I open to other priorities or visions
> for the project going forward. Are you interested in having my
> involvement? Arjan, I could definitely use some mentoring as I come up
> to speed, if that is something you are willing to do. I am sure I am
> going to have questions and it would be great to have your continued
> involvement to help guide where the project heads.

I’m happy to help you out. You can easily fork the repo and set it up elsewhere. I can give you write permission on my repo (send me your github id in a PM). I’ll have to check how I have stuff set up at Sourceforge and Lighthouse and direct it to your repo.

> So is Gaphor pronounced Guh-aphor like GNU (guh-new), or Gaph-or like gaff?

The name is a contraction of G (as in GNOME) and Aphorism, So I suppose Gah-phor would be the right pronounciation.

BTW. There’s nothing limiting you from giving it a catchier name :)

Regards,

Arjan


> Cheers!
> Dan Yeaw
>
>
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