CVS, Documentation, TODO Lists, New Maintainer, and Stuff

[Chad C. Walstrom]

On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 12:57:06PM +0200, Yngve Svendsen wrote:
> These features look useful indeed, and I would strongly recommend that
> Mel gets CVS access.

I sent him email about getting an account on savannah.gnu.org.  In order
to get CVS access, you need to import your ssh public key into your
account settings on savannah.  Then ask for membership to the group from
one of the administrators listed (which I need to ask you or Andrew to
appoint me to, BTW).

> One more thing, though. We should have a strict policy of keeping the
> docs up to date in synch with code checkins

Absolutely.  The only way to keep documentation current is to stay on
top of it.  I tried using the newer cvs2cl last night to update the
ChangeLogs, but the formatting is off.  It would probably make sense to
have a changelog target in the root Makefile.in so that we won't have to
remember how to reinvoke it every time.

Additionally, the cvs2cl doesn't pick out details that weren't placed in
the cvs log entry, such as the enclosed function name in some entries.
I'm not sure such detail is THAT important, but it's also possible to
update the log entries to contain that information too.

Perhaps it's time to add in log templates and a user list to the CVSROOT
for username-to-emailaddress resolution; perhaps an AUTHORS file should
be created.

On to the TODO file...  I use this very nice console tool called
devtodo, executed as "todo".  It creates an outlined TODO list saved in
XML format as ".todo".  Each subdirectory can have it's own .todo file,
and it's fairly simple to remap your shell "cd" command to display the
TODO list for that directory when you change into it.

In any case, I'm working on rewriting the current TODO file in the root
source directory using this devtodo tool.  We can start organizing some
of the feature requests and prominent bug fixes to a release schedule.
For example (off the top of my head, not referencing the current TODO
list):

    GNATS General TODO List
    1. Release 4.1
        1. Prepend $(DESTDIR) varibles to each install target (Chad)
        2. Clean up send-pr (Chad)
        3. Add missing manpages
        4. Update Documentation
    2. Release 4.2
        1. Mail handling enhancements (Mel)
            1. Mail-based manipulation of GNATS DB (Mel)
            2. Trigger-based mail format replies
            3. Enable To: address@hidden syntax to queue-pr
        2. MIME Handling
            1. Convert HTML to TEXT
            2. Detach Files Appropriately for GNATS DB format
        3. Add RDBMS Backend Support (Mel)
            1. Oracle Support
            2. DB Abstraction layer
    3. Release 4.3
        1. Mail handling enhancements
            1. Maintain mbox archive of all emails
            2. Fake Audit trail entries as emails and append to mbox archive
            3. Continue to use existing PR datafile for logging events,
               keywords, and metadata
        2. Account Enhancement
            1. PAM authentication

So on, and so forth. ;-P

-- 
Chad Walstrom <address@hidden>                 | a.k.a. ^chewie
http://www.wookimus.net/                            | s.k.a. gunnarr