Waking the dragon

[Louis DeJardin]

There was a session at altnetseattle I kicked off "How to organize an
OSS project for participation and longevity"

It was a thinly veiled attempt to solicit assistance, like the other
email thread, and recent tweet about "Re: Spark Project growth &
futures. Know talented community developers you believe should be
interested?"

The take-away from the session was very productive but didn't provide
simple answers. It provided obvious answers that require non-trivial
effort, which passes the sanity check of the engineer in me.

Grow the base of read-only adoption, encourage promotion to the second
tier of casual contributor, and it's from that tier the active
managing participants emerge. So it appears if I don't want to be
singly responsible for the code base it will take a lot more work to
make it a top-shelf project in terms of participation.

The message underlying all of this is that this software belongs to
everyone. Whether you've downloaded an eval zip, are using the tools
in your project, have blogged or screencast about spark, or have
submitted several patches you can see in the scc history today. You
are all stakeholders in the cultural value of the project, and I
believe it's this sense of ownership that makes the vibrant, explosive
open source cultures on other platforms.

That said, I think some artifacts and activities are missing, and for
that I apologize. At the moment there's not a good roadmap and the
issue/task tracking seems suboptimal. There are also some bits on the
ci server that could be posted as ctp on codeplex which have the mvc 2
fix and the recent pull requests integrated. I'll reply here if
there's any news on those counts.

The current focus at the moment, of course, is all about mvc 2
readiness and with a look at vs2010 secondarily.

Cheers,
-Lou

[Phil Haack]

Growing adoption is a huge part of it. If only .01% of users contribute, then it goes without saying you need more users. As ASP.NET MVC grows, I think so will Spark.

One way we can help with that is to get Spark-MVC project templates installable via Web PI and eventually via VS 2010 online templates.

This is not very difficult work, just takes a small amount of time investment.

The other part of it is making sure people understand clearly what pain Spark solves, which is in part a marketing/documentation effort.

Phil

Cheers,
-Lou

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[Eric Hexter]

I think a portion of this is about evangelism and accessibility. I know the people that talk about using spark have strong opinions about why it is so good.  At the same time, I have had a heck of a time finding someone willing to talk about it to the virtual MVC Usergroup.. See a disconnect there?  In order to grow adoption you need some strong advocates. It helps if that person already has a voice in the community. 

 

Phil hit on the accessibility, so putting some templates where it is all wired up into the Web Platform Installer would help..  Getting one of the www.asp.net website guys to directly link to it from the main project site, would help even more.  

 

I have been listening to a bunch of the jQuery podcasts and learning a lot about how they run their project more like a business than a hobby.  It includes things like making releases at times in the year when adoption, ie downloads slows down.  

 

 A good way to get this started with increasing adoption is to find one of your existing advocates and asking if they will pitch in on the non-coding side. This person could with builds, releases, and blogging. That sort of thing.. but just by creating new releases and keeping Spark front in center in the blogs, will help adoption.  It will remind those people who keep saying,, yeah I should try Spark, to get off the behinds and download it.   You heard the saying Out of sight, out of mind. That counts for OSS projects as well.

 

 I have just started putting this same thought around the MvcContrib project, I have not put enough attention to the frequent releases. I could probably go one for many paragraphs right now but I have to get my kids to bed.  If any of this resonates with you, let me know and I can shoot some more ideas to the list.

 

Thanks,

Eric

 

Eric Hexter

Director of OSS | Headspring | www.Headspring.com
email | ehe...@Headspring.com
blog | http://Hex.LosTechies.com
info | http://www.linkedin.com/in/erichexter

[Louis DeJardin]

Yeah, I think that all sounds exactly right.

I really appreciate the offer of build tooling on the other thread by the way, but I'll probably take a rain check on that. It doesn't sound like that's where the biggest issues are at the moment and like you say time is a rare commodity. Plus it sounds like a good opportinity to tap someone who would be interested in staging more frequent bits on codeplex rather than automating the process.

If there are other thoughts you have I would love to hear them.

[Adam Schroder]

I think that the intellisense has a huge impact on accessibility and uptake in the community. Developers who have been using the webforms engine have become used to it for years, and to try and get them to switch to something with little or no intellisense is a big jump (you know how the dot net community loves there tooling). 

Having fully supported intellisense in VS2010 for Spark would make an incredable difference. IMO its the only thing holding it back right now.

http://www.hill30.com/MikeFeingoldBlog/index.php/2009/07/31/django-editor-in-vs-2010-part-1-colors/

I would love to help out, but i think it is above me at this point in time. At least getting started anyways.

This is something I would love to try and do. Just wouldn't know where to begin.

Cheers.

Adam

[Louis DeJardin]

I think you could say good tooling support will be at least as challenging of a task as implementing the view engine in the first place. :) Had a chance to take a first look at the VS 2k10 SDK and the good news is it appears possible to do the work as a fully managed-code solution with unit/integration tests and a "F5 to run" dev experience. That's good news - a lot of people expressed interest in helping build out the 2k8 language service but the dev support was awful and the atlcom hacking needed was a bit extreme.


**** In other news, I'm happy to announce Erik Polerecky (@detroitpro) has agreed to be enrolled on codeplex help get preview/alpha bits online. I pinged him back from a twitter question where he was asking about getting a build http://eric.polerecky.com/archives/spark-binaries-for-asp-net-mvc-rc2/ online. ****

Next up - roadmap? Capture the short/long term tasks (including web pi) on a codeplex wiki page, and executing on them?

Cheers,
- Lou

[Donn Felker]

In regards to evangelism ... 

I have a fairly lengthy article that will be published in next months CODE Magazine which is all about, you guessed it... Spark. Maybe that will help create some more traction. 

Donn 

[Curtismitchell]

To add to that (evangelism), I continue to introduce developers to Spark at code camps on the East Coast.  I'm presenting Spark in NYC in March.

Curtis

[Bill Barry]

I'd love to help wherever I can but I am afraid I cannot afford to be
more than a casual contributor for the forseeable future. I am pushing
Spark hard at work though and I will need to be greatly enhancing the
development experience outside of VS (for instance having an in-browser
editor [maybe html, maybe silverlight, maybe wpf, I really don't know]
with some sort of intellisense and WYSIWYG interfaces which can output
spark templates and render faked models on the fly) because we will be
allowing non-coders to be generating their Spark templates (we are going
to use it to power our fully customizable pdf reporting engine as well
as an html display engine and an email templating system). If this would
be a project others are interested in, I can certainly bring up the
stories/designs/code (it will be OSS) as it coagulates and would love
help/input from anybody who wants to join in (the project will probably
start moving in the second half of this year).

[Jeff Schumacher]

Something hit me after the session on Saturday, I wonder if there's any correlation between the perceived complexity of an open source project to the number of contributors it has.  For example, a simple open source project like a blog (thinking BlogEngine.net, DasBlog, SubText) appears to me, upfront anyways, to be somewhat simpler than an open source MVC view engine.  If there is any merit to the assumption, then getting contributors to the project would definitely be more difficult.

Then, what could be done about this issue in particular?  I'm not so sure.  Perhaps a short screencast explaining how the internals of the view engine work as opposed to direct usage of the view engine itself.

I'm keen to help on the project, as I've started building a new site using Spark, though my time is limited.  As was mentioned in the session, I've started reading through the open issues to see where I might be able to help.

One thing that's a bit confusing, however, it the multiple sites related to Spark.  There's sparkviewengine.com, codeplex, github, and Google groups.  It is a bit confusing to know where to look - though you do have this centralized through the main website.

Anyways, just some thoughts.

Jeff

[Simone Chiaretta]

I'm part of the Subtext project, and trust me when I say that getting contributors is pretty difficult also for project that might be perceived as "simple"
Simo

--
Simone Chiaretta
Microsoft MVP ASP.NET - ASPInsider
Blog: http://codeclimber.net.nz
RSS: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/codeclimber
twitter: @simonech

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
"Life is short, play hard"

[Jeff Schumacher]

I knew the complexity perception idea was a stretch, but I do think there might be some merit in something that shows people how the project architecture works.  Perhaps that might get someone "in the door" as far as understanding the project, and make them feel more comfortable in making changes.

Simo - I know Subtext is not a "simple" project, I've looked at the code. :)  My point was merely that a developer might think that writing a blog would be easier than a framework component such as a view engine. Right or wrong, perception of difficulty might be a barrier.  Perhaps picking a blog engine as a comparison is the wrong example.

Jeff

[Simone Chiaretta]

What I meant is that even if perceived "simple", we have the same problem with finding contributors... so I don't think the perceived complexity is the key in that case.

Simo

[ste...@vanterpool.net]

I agree on this point. I've never been in on an open source project, but I love spark and am frequently tempted to do something.

Every time however, I hit two main issues:

1) How the hell does this all fit together/work

2)  What small thing can I do that is helpful but I can use to get my "feet wet". (A direct result of the confusion/intimidation caused by #1)

 

So I guess two small things would help me, and I assume others.

1) A blog post from someone who understands it all mapping out the different components and how they interact at a high level. At least then I'd know where to look for what functionality.

2) A list somewhere of smaller work-items that view engine newbies could take on.

 

 

From: Jeff Schumacher

Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 6:54 AM

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Subject: Re: Waking the dragon

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Simone Chiaretta
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twitter: @simonech

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
"Life is short, play hard"
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[Stephen Vanterpool]

Really? No thoughts here?

---

From: ste...@vanterpool.net

To: spar...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Waking the dragon

Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:41:39 -0800

[Jeff Schumacher]

The blog post explaining how things work would be great.  The list of items that people can work on is partially covered by the Active Work Items on CodePlex at http://sparkviewengine.codeplex.com/WorkItem/List.aspx, isn't it?

Jeff

[Stephen Vanterpool]

It is somewhat covered there, but I was envisioning a more "curated" version. I will admit that's not as important to me though as a getting started post.
 

---

Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:29:44 -0800

Subject: Re: Waking the dragon

From: je...@codingreflection.com
To: spar...@googlegroups.com

[Louis DeJardin]

==conclusion in advance==

So two action items here: start a section on the CMS for describing
architecture, and go through all of the issues in codeplex to see
which are complete, which are no longer valid, and which should
remain.

Would anyone like to get bumped up on codeplex privs to help manage
that second task?

==more==

@Bill, that sounds like a great idea. The parser in Spark provides
token/position information if you for colorization in the vs2k8
language service - that's a capability you might want to tap into. The
csharp colorization/intellisense is coming from VS of course, so that
part's probably all but impossible to repurpose.

@Jeff, yeah, I've kept the internals as clean as I could but it can be
tricky in places. Some folks who have gone in to make specific changes
have remarked it was easy to get where they needed to be - but I'm not
sure if a lot of other people know how it works end to end... That is
a good point about multiple resources. They were all centrally located
at one point (trac+svn on sparkviewengine.com plus google groups) but
yeah - downloads and tracking went to codeplex, source code went to
github, CI was added to teamcity on codebetter, and a CMS was added to
hold the docs instead of trac's wiki.

Not really sure what to do about that. :\ I think codeplex has a
better download story, and Mercurial is a great change, but github
forking is too good to give up. I kind of want to keep
sparkviewengine.com as a primary project site too - it's more flexible
than codeplex wiki...

@Stephen, @Jeff, Yeah, sounds like you're both validating the need for
some high-level architecture descriptions. The other thing that came
up was a list of things that need to be done - at the moment it's
unfortunately stable... The highest requested feature is vs2010
integration which isn't a spark dev task at all, really. So I think
there are two action items here - I'll put them at the top of the
email since I don't expect anybody to read this far.