[gmx-developers] Development Communication Tools, was: Python interface for Gromacs

[Szilárd Páll]

I also strongly support issue tracking systems. Most importantly, a
well set up system with bugs, features, roadmap, wiki, etc. as
integrated and as straightforward to use as possible - pretty much
what Teemu suggested. The problem I see with the current setup is that
there is a very loose (in some case almost no) integration between
bugs/features and their assignments to developers, git, etc.

Although I don't have deep experience with any of the systems, I've
heard good things about Trac and Redmine. However, switching to any of
them would of course require a bit of effort - though it very well
might pay off.

Otherwise, getting Bugzilla a bit in shape could also help a lot, for
instance git integration (http://www.theoldmonk.net/gitzilla) would
save a lot of headache.

--
Szilárd



On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 3:57 PM, Teemu Murtola <teemu.murtola at cbr.su.se> wrote:
>> I personally don't believe that (web-)forums help the discussions over
>> archived mailing lists. But I think it is important to have a good subject
>> for the mail-thread to be able to find a thread later. Ideally we would have
>> a summary/conclusion of important email-threads on the wiki, but I'm
>> doubtful that we find someone volunteering to write those summaries.
>
> For general discussion, I agree that (archived) mailing lists are
> probably the best choice.  If there are a lot of details to be agreed
> on, an e-mail discussion can easily become cumbersome, so such things
> probably would be better handled in proper meetings.  Things that come
> out of such meetings and are of general interest should ideally be put
> on the wiki.
>
> For tracking what is going on in the development, the current scheme
> of having the roadmap on the wiki is a good start, but it hasn't been
> updated in a while...  I've had some exposure to Trac, and something
> similar could work here as well.  I don't know how much of it could
> already be implemented in bugzilla, but the basic idea would be to
> have _all_ tasks, whether they be small bugs or large-scale coding or
> performance optimization tasks, in the same system.  Trac also allows
> one to add milestones and assign issues to these.  Something like this
> would make it much easier to keep track of what is being done, who is
> doing it, will it be included in the next release, and so on.  Having
> a proper system instead of a free-form wiki would most likely keep
> things much more up-to-date, much like the bugzilla now does for bugs
> and small enhancements.
>
> A teleconference now and then might not be a bad idea to discuss
> general directions.
>
> Teemu
>
> --
> Teemu Murtola
> <teemu.murtola at cbr.su.se>
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