[Mesa-dev] New Mesa3D.org website proposal

[Erik Faye-Lund]

On Wed, 2020-05-13 at 06:43 -0600, Brian Paul wrote:
> On 05/13/2020 03:13 AM, Erik Faye-Lund wrote:
> > On Tue, 2020-05-12 at 12:17 +0200, Erik Faye-Lund wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2020-05-07 at 11:03 -0600, Brian Paul wrote:
> > > > On 05/07/2020 04:33 AM, Erik Faye-Lund wrote:
> > > > > Hey Brian
> > > > > 
> > > > > TLDR; are you OK with me moving forward with the rework of
> > > > > mesa3d.org?
> > > > 
> > > > Yes...
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Cool! We've now set up a repo here:
> > > 
> > > https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgitlab.freedesktop.org%2Fmesa%2Fmesa3d.org&data=02%7C01%7Cbrianp%40vmware.com%7Cb8ff6d838d46414812f208d7f71df219%7Cb39138ca3cee4b4aa4d6cd83d9dd62f0%7C0%7C0%7C637249580306260765&sdata=CLd07g8WPm7mbsa3033pnhycK25xPD5%2Bi00V0MJ6TIY%3D&reserved=0
> > > 
> > > I pushed the bare minimum (ish) there so far, and sent a MR for
> > > the
> > > importing of the news and article-redirects. This is now being
> > > served
> > > here:
> > > 
> > > https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmesa.pages.freedesktop.org%2Fmesa3d.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cbrianp%40vmware.com%7Cb8ff6d838d46414812f208d7f71df219%7Cb39138ca3cee4b4aa4d6cd83d9dd62f0%7C0%7C0%7C637249580306260765&sdata=GmaivI1wH4HR6osRoP%2FINlJm%2FgZ6tgb8HsE1ElVhZNE%3D&reserved=0
> > > 
> > 
> > A few updates:
> > 
> > 1. You can now preview the repo with the pending MRs merged here,
> > if
> > you're interested:
> > https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkusma.pages.freedesktop.org%2Fmesa3d.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cbrianp%40vmware.com%7Cb8ff6d838d46414812f208d7f71df219%7Cb39138ca3cee4b4aa4d6cd83d9dd62f0%7C0%7C0%7C637249580306260765&sdata=U7cC71x9ql%2FCNXpdNxO2%2But3NAVzDo6S91%2BmevJjMsc%3D&reserved=0
> > 
> > 2. Some people have been asking me why the website is set up as a
> > separate repo rather than a subdirectory inside the main mesa repo.
> > 
> > The quick answer to that is that it seemed more logical that way to
> > me.
> > The website isn't really tied to the mesa release-schedule, apart
> > from
> > linking to new releases. It's really its own thing. We might for
> > instance want to post updates when other projects in the mesa-group
> > cuts a release. So this seems to give us some more freedom.
> > 
> > If someone has good arguments against this, I'm open to changing
> > it.
> > But this seems like the best option to me.
> 
> I'd really like to keep the Mesa content as part of the main Mesa
> repo. 
> I didn't realize you did that.  The website is part of the project
> and 
> it's more convenient to have it all in one place.

I agree that for a lot of the content, that's the case. But this is
kind of the point here: Some stuff doesn't relate to the code, and
those are the things that I've proposed to move out.

Right now, the website only contains this:
1. A brief introduction of APIs and drivers
2. News
3. Instructions on how update the website

Only 1 is somewhat related to the code, but at a very shallow level,
and the information changes on a very slow rate. Keeping this up-to
date doesn't seem like a big burden to me.

News relate to releases, but not to the state of the code itself. 

Instructions on how to update the website is website-metainfo, and
doesn't relate to the code.

Everything else is still in the repo, which will be hosted at
docs.mesa3d.org. And I think this is the content that is convenient to
update together with the code.

So, I don't think there's any real inconvenience introduced here. We
should thread carefully in what content we migrate out of the main
repository.

Having content in the main repository also leads to some issues, like
finding the right content for the right release. It can be frustrating
to read content that is more up-to-date than the version you're using.

This work doesn't solve that right now, but it's taking a step in that
direction: We can start versioning the technical documentation, while
still allowing people to see up-to-date news. This could easily be
finished off by moving docs.mesa3d.org to be hosted at readthedocs.org,
which supports multiple versions. I already did a test-intgration of
that, and it was trivial, but I didn't like the added ads, so I'm
holding off on it for now.

But I would very much like to see versioned docs as a future step.