MacCode Future

[Jonathan Wight]

So MacCode needs to have a future.

It has been just over a year since we first discussed the concept at
C4[0]. Let's see if we can get a beyond the currrent maccode big ol'
repository and make something more of it.

I think what we desperately need is project metadata. This will allow
us to categorize the projects and provide a search interface for it.
This is going to be key if we can convince developers to actually use
it.

All we really for a first step is metadata. We can wrap a search
interface and database on top of that later if/when the project is a
success.

I was thinking one easy way to the do the metadata itself is to embed
it in the project documenatation.. We could either find or create a
project microformat that can be embedded in any HTML documentation. A
script could then scan the projects, looking for microformats and then
produce a table of contents for all projects within Maccode.

Projects that dont have HTML documentation would need a little XML
file stored within the project directory.

So here are the steps I think we should undertake:

#1 Decide on a metadata format to use (I've looked at http://usefulinc.com/doap/
DOAP - which seems to be relatively mature).

#2 Create metadata for any existing projects in Maccode (restructuring
the Maccode repository as needed)

#3 Create a script that can process the metadata and produce
meaningful XML and HTML based TOCs from it.

#4 Blog the hell out of this so developers know it exists.

#5 Get other developers to metadata-ify their projects and contribute
them to maccode.

I think this is the minimum we can do. The work involved is relatively
minor, I'm happy to contribute a couple of days to getting #1 & #3
done as long as I can get help with the other tasks.

With this we'll have a repository of source code and a structured
index of project metadata. From there we can build a fancy web
interface onto it - or whatever.

Comments?

Jon.

[Chris Forsythe]

On Oct 29, 2007, at 6:33 PM, Jonathan Wight wrote:

Projects that dont have HTML documentation would need a little XML

file stored within the project directory.

Everything else seemed fine. Regarding this point, we should require docs with everything. There shouldn't be an exception in my opinion.

Chris

[Jonathan Wight]

"Projects that dont have _HTML_ documentation"

i.e. projects with docs as plaintext/RTF/PDF/whatever. All projects
should have docs. Ideally in a certain format, but I'm not going to
dictate that every project must have HTML documentation.

Jon.

[mildm8nnered]

What kind of things would be in the metadata -

are you looking to index classes/methods in a headerdoc/javadoc kind
of way, plus some basic description of the project, or something more
than that?

[Jonathan Wight]

Take a look at the DOAF creator for Apache Projects (ASL is one of the
few organisations already using DOAP):

http://projects.apache.org/create.html

That kind of stuff. Maintainer, licenses, URL, etc etc. We can of
course pick and choose what we want from DOAP (or whatever format we
use - but DOAP is looking more and more like a winner) and add to it
as needed.

Jon.