hackage 2: alpha testing, testers wanted!

[Duncan Coutts]

Hi folks,

I believe we're ready for alpha testing for hackage 2. The
server is up at:

http://new-hackage.haskell.org/

Key points:
      * All the old data is imported (including docs)
      * Uploading is enabled
      * Live mirroring is also enabled
      * Per-package maintainer groups are pre-populated
      * Existing users should be able to log in (after a one-time
        upgrade)   

I would like to invite everyone on this list to help out with the alpha
testing and to report issues here on this list. Patches are even better.
The server is up now so you'll get "instant patch gratification"tm if
you chip in and fix things.

In addition to any bugs you may discover, the server main page gives an
overview of the features that are partially complete and could do with
some love.

When we're satisfied we'll move into beta testing and advertise more
widely within the community (reddit etc).

The doc builder is not set up yet, but the builder client code exists,
just need to get that set up.

In general the switch over plan remains that we run the two servers in
parallel for long enough to sort out remaining issues (with help from
the kind folks who volunteered as admins).

Code and wiki
=============

The code is all still in darcs.
darcs get http://code.haskell.org/hackage-server/

The plan is to move it to github at some stage.

The wiki content is still useful though starting to get a bit out of
sync:

http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/wiki/HackageDB/2.0

We had to turn off wiki editing for most users because of spammers. If
you'd like to work on the wiki, let me know and I'll give your account
permission to edit it. Note also that I think Ben Millwood is planning
to move the content to github at some stage, though we can still make
improvements to the content in the meantime.


Hackage Admins
==============

I believe the following people volunteered to be admins, at least for
the alpha/beta testing period:

      * Erik Hesselink
      * Ben Millwood
      * Johan Tibell

If you folks (or anyone else who wants to volunteer) would like to
confirm that then I'll add you to the admins group.

User accounts
=============

Existing users should be fine. That process should now be fairly smooth
(testing welcome!). For new users, they can sign up with email
confirmation. An administrator is needed to add a user into the
uploaders group. Currently there's not a lot you can do with an account
if you're not in the uploaders group. That may change in future if we
implement "social" features.

Hackage Trustees
================

In addition to admins we have the "trustees" group. This should
eventually be a rather useful job. The idea is that the trustees don't
upload packages but look after the health of the package collection as a
whole (or some subset they're interested in), a bit like distro
maintainers. Currently they can only edit package tags and upload docs
(e.g. if the doc builder fails) but the plan is for them (as well as
maintainers) to be able to edit package metadata, in particular the
constraints on dependencies. Once we get there, that'll be a rather
important job. So I'm also looking for volunteers there, both to be
trustees and to help finish implementing the metadata-editing feature.

-- 
Duncan Coutts, Haskell Consultant
Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/