I know that John has a heap of apps that he repackages personally, and while Gord has done an awesome job of picking up where John can't always get to them straight away, we may be able to help both John hand off some of that load and all the developers to know where they stand with official apps and which apps they can take over.
I think it would be worth setting up a couple of new pages (they don't need to be forum threads, they would be better off on the development page as they are specifically development related):
The first would be a list of current developers with their current status (eg. "on holidays until 24/5" or "packaging on weekends only" etc.) - this would assist us to know which apps need to be temporarily taken over and help us know that someone hasn't become inactive if they are just on holidays or without internet.
The second list would show all of the official apps and their dedicated developers (where they have a dedicated dev) as well as the developer's status for that app (eg. willing to hand it off to someone else).
This would show us which apps don't have a dedicated dev, and we could then show our interest as to which apps we want to take over, thus (hopefully) freeing John of a little more workload plus giving a more centralized place to see what each app's status is.
I personally would be happy to take over a few more apps, complexity doesn't really bother me but I'd prefer nothing with custom code (for now), nothing with too quick a release cycle, and open source is preferable.
Devs if you think this is a good idea please weigh in here. I would be happy to start compiling the list of official apps and their dedicated devs as I can - any help from you guys would be great too.
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Not sure how much of that could be done sanely, but I agree that a central dev-to-app list would be useful.
but it would be pretty easy to set up.
I'd go through the official releases list and tabulate who released what. Afterwards devs would have the chance to notify me of anything I have missed, anything I couldn't figure out or has changed since last release of the app. John could then let us know which of his apps he wants to keep as his own and which he wants to hand off to someone else.
Future upkeep will be easy. When a new app is released someone will add it to the list (I would be happy to do it as I can usually get to it within a few hours of a release during Australian weekdays, or another dev could handle it when I am unavailable or running late). When a developer becomes inactive their apps are marked as unclaimed. When a developer picks up an app we mark it as theirs.
Once the list is compiled anything still left unclaimed would be in developer limbo as they currently are, but at least we would have a place to see that it doesn't belong to anybody, and thus be able to say "hey, I'll update app X since there is a new version" without stepping on anyone's toes.
I really hope it gets implemented.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
I'm a bit skeptical about the idea simply because developers would have to report their absence in advance, and it might prove difficult to maintain. Though if participants were active about it, it might prove useful.
Whatever the case, here is a start. Taken from Details>Publisher on app pages. For some reason, my script returned "Date updated" for XAMPP, and there are several "301 Moved Permanently" entries.
...
Full list (expires in 7 days): http://pastebin.com/cJiqnYu5
My posts are old and likely no longer relevant.
I put it in my blog in case the 7 days are up: https://portableapps.com/node/37068
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
You might want to put one of the updated versions. I re-ran it with following redirects and tweaked regex. Last time, a couple of apps such as ClamWin got left out due to redirects, and XAMPP had the wrong field data.
List version: http://pastebin.com/YVPG48H0
Table version: http://pastebin.com/CkxbyppN
Apps can be further divided into those maintained by third parties and those maintained by PA. http://pastebin.com/vqRcqqXk
This would ideally be sorted within an SQL database or something of that kind, but that requires time and resources to setup.
My posts are old and likely no longer relevant.
Thanks for that. It gives me a great basis to work with.
Couldn't sleep so I am getting a start on it - I'll likely go through the Accessibility, Development, Education and maybe Security categories right now (the smaller categories since I don't want to be up all night) which equates to somewhere between 15-20% of the list I think. The rest I'll have a hack at tomorrow.
I'll cross-reference with the actual app list and where a developer isn't listed I will actually check the base app's download page to make sure it comes from there.
Where I can't find a developer I will probably just list John as developer, and as suggested in Simeon's blog post I am going to separate current versus (potentially) retired devs (based on the status listed in Gord's "Our Team" post). There will likely be some errors on my part through it all, but it is a start.
Regarding reporting absences - we can usually tell if we are going away on holidays (although sometimes emergencies or last-minute business trips do pop up) but if someone doesn't report in I assume we'd just fall back on the current system.
one thing to keep in mind is that the original dev tends to be listed on the app's page, rather than the current maintainer.
I'll do my part to help with the list once I'm done updating apps.
Yeah, I understand that.
With no other way to tell right now I am placing still active devs in the "current" column, and retired devs in the "past" column.
Once I've got the list to a state where it can be posted then we can sort it out further.
The list is now as complete as I can make it without further input from others. I have added some notes based on the outdated official apps thread where they pertain to long-term blocked releases, and have removed (commented out for now) the Firefox and Thunderbird extensions which don't have actual development involved.
I've temporarily posted it here on my own webserver so everyone can see the formatted result and so I could also add some very basic statistics and a couple of filters to help ease the suffering of manually looking through 300+ entries.
You can view all apps and then filter by developer name (the text filter works on both current and previous developer names), or just view the unassigned apps.
Regarding a more permanent home do we want the list posted here as a wiki page as previously suggested (and up to John to implement), or would it be preferable for me to continue hosting it on my own server where we can keep the filtering options, and potentially implement more?
Let me know what you think, and any amendments to the list just post them here and I will update as I can.
I'm actually going to be handling the Miranda NG packaging, as per a comment conversation with JTH on my original dev test page.
Added you to Miranda NG.
There's a handful I'm handling now, I'll get you a list shortly.
Here's an update that encompasses the entire list. I've only included information that isn't already on the list.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aizk8vcx4EYOdFMwd1lvcXRtRU5...
Have updated the list to reflect what you've got except a couple of cases where you had missing current or past devs and my list already had them (if any were specifically meant to be blank, let me know).
Also added a comment where an app requires an updated installer (except DShutdown which has been dropped from the app list). I'm assuming that John will accept revisions for these apps if they are no longer actively developed, so we can get the installers up to date without waiting potentially years for a new version.
Any apps that had correct info, I left that info alone.