mentors.debian.net runs the debexpo code now

To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

Subject: mentors.debian.net runs the debexpo code now

From: Asheesh Laroia <asheesh@asheesh.org>

Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 07:03:03 -0400 (EDT)

Message-id: <[🔎] alpine.DEB.2.00.1108110654010.2093@rose.makesad.us>

Hello lovely debian-devel folks,

Thanks to huge work by Johnny Lamb, Christoph Haas, Jan Dittberner, Kalle

Söderman, Serafeim Zanikolas, David Paleino, and Paul Wise, we have had a

alpha-level product called Debexpo that can replace mentors.debian.net as

the place we do package review for new contributors in Debian.

About a year ago, we began the process to revive the project. Andrey

Rahmatullin (wRAR), Arno Töll, Wolodja Wentland, and I have finally

finished it. Christine Spang (along with SIPB at MIT) put together the

virtual machine that runs it. Thanks to many others who have provided

advice and ideas.

It's live: http://mentors.debian.net/ The big differences between this and the old code are: * Maintainable codebase

* Ability to see package quality on the package page -- see e.g.

* Ability to leave comments on the web, and subscribe to receive email

updates about packages

* Ability to write new plugins that do new kinds of quality checks

* Beautiful new design, based on main Debian.org layout (idea thanks to

Francesca Ciceri)

* Christoph Haas can finally stop worrying that it'll never happen.

Finishing this coding and migration has been the biggest single thing I've

been doing in my life for the past three or four weeks, so I am now going

to take a bit of a break from it. I will try to advise and make sure that

the community grows.

Huge props to Arno for not only excellent hacking, but fantastic work in

getting new contributors.

http://wiki.debian.org/Debexpo explains where to find the bug tracker and

mailing list.

There is surely more work to be done -- changing strings, updating more

docs, and so forth. You can find us on #debexpo and also our bug tracker.

P.S. Johnny Lamb's original code is actually of pretty high quality. Huge

thanks to him for that; the logging and the clear file layout helped us as

immensely.

-- Asheesh.