BenjiSmith wrote:
> Well, somebody's got to do it, and it may as well be me.

So, how far are you at the moment?

Do you need any help?

-eye

In article <bjnlcf$2ljn$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Ilya Minkov says...
>
>BenjiSmith wrote:
>> Well, somebody's got to do it, and it may as well be me.
>
>So, how far are you at the moment?
>
>Do you need any help?
>
>-eye
>

I'm actually pretty far along in the process. I've picked all of the software that I'll be using. I've bought the domain name. I did some serious shopping for juuuuuust the right hosting provider (I'll tell you guys more about this later). I've installed all the software that we'll need, including the subversion source-repository server ( read more at http://subversion.tigris.org ) and the gforge project-management interface.

I had forgotten what an enormous pain in the ass it is to install software on unix boxes. I've spent the last 3 weeks (remember, this isn't my full-time job) trying to sort out dependencies between all of the software, and, in the end, this is the complete list of all the software that I had to compile and install:

autoconf
libtool
bison
flex
apache 2
subversion
gforge
berkeley db
kerberos
php
gd
libpng
libjpeg
libfreetype
imap
readline
mysql
phpMyAdmin
postgreSQL
python
lynx

Nearly all of these software packages needed to be compiled from source code. All of them had to configured with lots of special options so that they could play nice with eachother. Many of them had version-specific dependencies on eachother, and few of them were able to find the appropriate header files and libraries that they needed for compilation without significant help from me.

All of this is somewhat of an inspiration for me to propose some sort of common source-tree structure for d development, but I'll save that for another thread.

Anyhow, at the moment, all of the software we'll need has been installed, and it all seems to be working. I'm doing a little bit of database config stuff right now, and then I'm going to have to write a little bit of code to modify the existing php modules, which expect to connect with CVS, so that they can connect to the subversion server than that. After that, I'll be ready to perform some alpha testing with a few small projects and code-repositories. As soon as I finish a round of alpha testing (and maybe a little bit of graphic design to customize the default gforge template), I'll ask for a few beta testers from the ng. After a round of beta testing, I'll make a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT here in the ng, and the official D repository site will be up and running.

Hopefully, there will be lots of support from the existing D community. I'm expecting the authors of any significant D projects (dig, DUI, etc.) to use the repository as their source-control and release management mechanism. Ideally, if Walter is game, I'd like to have phobos hosted as a project on the site, and to make that project the primary means of distributing phobos. What's more--as long as Walter is willing--I'm going to mirror the dmd compiler binaries (and the changelog) in their own project.

To get ready for the big day when I announce the site, it would probably be wise to familiarize yourself with the "subversion" source control system, if you're not already. It's very similar to CVS, but at least slightly better in every way.

As far as a timeline is concerned, I think I'll be done with the alpha testing stage within less than a week (knock on wood), and I expect to be done with beta testing in less than three weeks (if I can get some people to volunteer to be testers).

Other than that, I think we're on our way.