[gmx-developers] team communication tools for GROMACS

[Szilárd Páll]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 8:30 PM, Alexey Shvetsov <alexxy at omrb.pnpi.spb.ru>
wrote:

> IRC can be used together with bots that keep channel history, post git
> update
> messages, jenkins build messages and so on. Many OSS projects use it as
> main
> communication platform (linux kernel development, jolla phone, gentoo, many
> other distros...)
>

I have used IRC lightly as a user and I know that it _can_ do most of what
these glorified web 2+ IRC clones provide.

However, I wonder:

- How much effort is it to set it all up, is it comparable at all? Without
self-hosting you don't get much (in terms of customization and history
saving), do you?

- The "it just works" aspect when it comes to collaboration among busy
academics is not negligible.
Take as an example these Slack features:
 * The Hangouts connector can be enabled with 2-3 clicks; then you can open
a channel and type "/hangout" and your video-chat session will start
immediately.
 * It's got integration with jenkins, and Gateways for connecting/sending
using IRC/XMPP/email
- The GROMACS dev community is far smaller, less active, and has way less
hacker hands to set up stuff wrt the project you listed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pushing slack as *the* option that everybody
should be "voluntarily" choose, I'd be glad to have a option with less
vendor lock-in. However, I want to be realistic and not end up with e.g. an
IRC channel which is mostly dead and very few ever use it.

Cheers,
--
Szilárd


> В письме от Wednesday 30 September 2015 07:08:39 пользователь Roland Schulz
> написал:
> > There are a couple see for example:
> > http://beebom.com/2015/04/slack-alternatives-for-team-communication
> > http://opensource.com/business/15/9/alternatives-slack-team-chat
> >
> > But I don't have any personal experience.
> >
> > Roland
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 6:48 AM, Szilárd Páll <pall.szilard at gmail.com>
> >
> > wrote:
> > > PS: Forgot to mention that OSS - or at least OSS-based tool would be a
> > > great benefit, but even if such an option does exist we need to find it
> > > (and it should preferably not require self-hosting).
> > >
> > > --
> > > Szilárd
> > >
> > > On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 3:47 PM, Szilárd Páll <pall.szilard at gmail.com>
> > >
> > > wrote:
> > >> IRC has been on my radar and in fact it has been suggested a while ago
> > >> during GROMACS dev discussion, but somehow it has never had enough
> appeal
> > >> to get adopted by developers.
> > >>
> > >> One likely reason is the barrier to start using IRC and that
> integration
> > >> of other productivity tools is quite DYI. AFAIK these are the aspects
> > >> where
> > >> slack - and possibly other similar alternatives win: user-friedliness
> and
> > >> service-integration e.g. Google hangouts for video calls, Gihub,
> > >> Dropbox/Box, Github, custom hooks (e.g. we could have jenkins, gerrit
> > >> messages posted, etc.).
> > >>
> > >> Interestingly Slack has won over some communities, a notable example
> is
> > >> WP:
> > >> https://make.wordpress.org/chat/
> > >> and this post points out some of the differences between the two and
> why
> > >> they've switched to slack.
> > >>
> > >> I'll wait a bit more, but if there are no competing thoughts I'll set
> up
> > >> slack and see how well it works.
> > >>
> > >> Cheers,
> > >> --
> > >> Szilárd
> > >>
> > >> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 2:49 PM, Vedran Miletić <rivanvx at gmail.com>
> > >>
> > >> wrote:
> > >>> 2015-09-29 20:18 GMT+02:00 Szilárd Páll <pall.szilard at gmail.com>:
> > >>> > Hi,
> > >>> >
> > >>> > We are considering to try using a team collaboration tool for
> GROMACS
> > >>> > development-related communication (perhaps user hangout room too?).
> > >>> >
> > >>> > As I have some experience with slack.com (not much, though), so I
> was
> > >>>
> > >>> about
> > >>>
> > >>> > to go ahead and create a channel, but noticed that it has a
> slightly
> > >>> > inconvenient restriction: max 10k messages kept in the history.
> > >>> >
> > >>> > So I thought I'd ask:
> > >>> > - does anybody have experience with slack (either good or bad)?
> > >>> > - does anybody know anything better?
> > >>>
> > >>> How about IRC on freenode.net?
> > >>>
> > >>> Regards,
> > >>> Vedran
> > >>>
> > >>> --
> > >>> Vedran Miletić
> > >>> http://vedranmileti.ch/
> > >>> --
> > >>> Gromacs Developers mailing list
> > >>>
> > >>> * Please search the archive at
> > >>> http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/GMX-developers_List
> before
> > >>> posting!
> > >>>
> > >>> * Can't post? Read http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists
> > >>>
> > >>> * For (un)subscribe requests visit
> > >>>
> https://maillist.sys.kth.se/mailman/listinfo/gromacs.org_gmx-developers
> > >>> or send a mail to gmx-developers-request at gromacs.org.
>
> --
> Best Regards,
> Alexey 'Alexxy' Shvetsov, PhD
> Department of Molecular and Radiation Biophysics
> FSBI Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, NRC Kurchatov Institute,
> Leningrad region, Gatchina, Russia
> mailto:alexxyum at gmail.com
> mailto:alexxy at omrb.pnpi.spb.ru
> --
> Gromacs Developers mailing list
>
> * Please search the archive at
> http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/GMX-developers_List before
> posting!
>
> * Can't post? Read http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists
>
> * For (un)subscribe requests visit
> https://maillist.sys.kth.se/mailman/listinfo/gromacs.org_gmx-developers
> or send a mail to gmx-developers-request at gromacs.org.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://maillist.sys.kth.se/pipermail/gromacs.org_gmx-developers/attachments/20151001/aea51336/attachment-0001.html>