[Xesam] Request for an overview

[Antoni Mylka]

Philip Van Hoof pisze:
> We had a conference where we discussed several things. I was just
> checking the current status. We was me, Jürg, Sebastian Trüg, Rob
> Taylor, Ivan Frade (if I missed somebody, let me know. Not sure if Jos
> Vandenoever also discussed ontology with us).
> 
> What I noticed so far:
> 
> - Apparently has a project called OSCAF been setup on sourceforce.
> 
>   http://sourceforge.net/projects/oscaf/
> 
> - Although I had the impression that at the conference most people where
>   reluctant to opt for trac, trac is nevertheless being installed as the
>   ticket system.
> 
>   I don't know how 'okay' this is for all people. My impression at least
>   was that this isn't ok.

Well, it's there, it works, and people have already migrated most of the
open  issues from the old NEPOMUK trac, so I guess there is little use
to drop it all now.

> - I also had the impression that most people would prefer git,
>   nonetheless is SVN being installed as repository. This is probably not
>   a very big issue, just pointing out.

The SF trac doesn't have git integration (yet), so choosing git would
rob us of the cool timeline, the source browser, and the ability to link
to sources from wiki and ticket comments.

> - Sebastian has starting implementing the layout changes that we
>   discussed at the conference. This is nice, thanks!
> 
> 
> Important items that we need:
> 
> o. Formal decisions on branch management. Apparently is Evgeny's opinion
>    (discussion on IRC) that trunk should be stable, and that development
>    happens in branches. Sebastian Trüg's (and my opinion, too) appears
>    to be that trunk is development and we'll have stable version
>    branches.
> 
>    I conclude that there's no conclusion on this, and that we should
>    soon make a decision. This will of course matter for the projects
>    depending on the shared ontology project.

Indeed. I would also rather do the development on trunk and have
'stable' branches.

> o. A decision on the bugtracking system (this is urgent)

Once again, the trac is as good as any.

> o. A product in that bugtracking system

That trac instance is dedicated solely to the shared ontologies, no need
to have any separate products.

> o. A component for each ontology on that product
> 
>   o. Each component will have a default assignee
>   o. Some of the developers will be put in CC for all ontologies
>   o. Patches containing Tracker's initial ontology-change requests. We
>      have quite a few change requests already, indeed.

currently it looks like this:
New Ontology Draft   trueg  	
ontology-nao 	SimonScerri 	
ontology-nfo 	trueg 	
ontology-nie 	leo_sauermann 	
ontology-nmm 	konttori 	
ontology-nrl 	simonscerri 	
ontology-pimo 	leo_sauermann
The list of who volunteered for what is here:
https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/oscaf/wiki/OntologyMaintenance

> o. Structural decisions on who will maintain what

See above, this can change whenever there is need to. For instance,
Simon Scerri (the original NAO maintainer from DERI/Ireland) hasn't
confirmed his wish to be further involved.

> o. The layout changes (but Sebastian already started this, awesome!)
> 
>   o. Build environment ( remember autotools being mentioned)

Sebastian started writing some scripts, and there is a basic doc
generator and valiator from Ivan. There is some resistance against
expanding on the java-based tools from nepomuk. For java projects I'd
imagine a packaging system similar to the aperture-vocabulary package

https://aperture.svn.sf.net/svnroot/aperture/aperture/trunk/core/vocabulary/core/

Though I must admit I know very little about c/c++ and I don't know what
are the requirements for ontology packaing. This has probably been
agreed on at GCDS. (minutes anyone????). If it's really necessary to
have a java-free build environment for everyone, i'd probably hack the
java packaging outside the main tree, so that the c/c++ community won't
have to do anything with it.

>   o. The TriG files and the directory layout for them

Already there.

>   o. A file describing the dependency tree of the ontologies
>   o. Documentation about custom ontology install procedure
>   o. Tools for generating documentation (part of the build environment)

Right now there are two. The java one used in nepomuk, showcased at
www.semanticdesktop.org/ontologies, and one developed by Ivan.

> I noticed some confusion on who is doing what, how what is being done
> and where it is being done. Therefor I think it would be useful if
> people would (more clearly) point such things out on this mailing list,
> and use it more often to articulate decisions made at conference
> meetings (as these days they are happening, at a high frequency).

As for the discussions I couldn't agree more. Is there anything that was
agreed on at GCDS that hasn't been mentioned in Sebastian's blog post?
http://trueg.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/gran-canaria-desktop-summit-2009-the-nepomuk-perspective/

For instance, what exactly has been decided on the ontology packaging?

Antoni Mylka
antoni.mylka at gmail.com