[ghns] Idea about integrating SVN, also general brainstorming and status request

[Ian Monroe]

I'm a developer of Amarok and we've identified a few problems with the
current setup that Amarok 1.4 has with kde-apps.

* On kde-apps a script is tied to its original creator. If the creator
stops making releases, it becomes abandonware unless someone forks it.
* Bitrot. Sometimes a script works perfectly fine, but just needs a
bit of tweaking to work with an updated Amarok or webservice. People
can submit patches to the maintainer, but how do you even know they're
still working on it (see above).
* There really isn't anyway to do quality control on the scripts.
Not-so-great-QC is part of user-generated content, but it can be
improved.

For a while now Amarok has had a SVN repo available for use by script
writers, partly to address these issues. But the kde-apps "one app,
one maintainer" policy kind of negates it. We want to bring the Amarok
scripts (some of which are quite complex) into the full spirit of OSS
and make easy collaboration the default.

One idea is to have a SVN (or git) repo, and have GHNS generated the
releases out of it. This is partly inspired by Rails, where you can
upgrade to new version by specifying a SVN tag. So instead of users
uploading tarballs, they could setup a project and then commit to a
special SVN repo. Tarballs could be generated out of a tag. So while
it would be etiquette to let the creator/maintainer of a script decide
when to the release, there would be no technical barrier to bar any
SVN contributor  from doing so. Amarok developers could also follow
all the new commits, so this would add some security as well.

I believe the development of the repos on kstuff.org is in part to
address these issues. I'm ignorant though, so let me know if I'm
proposing solutions to problems already solved. :)

Ian