[wxPython-users] new project hosting provider... me?

[Telly Williams]

Robin Dunn wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Sorry for cross-posting, but I wanted to make sure that everybody in
> the community sees this message.  Please send follow ups to the
> wx-discuss list.
>
> Over the past few months I've become increasingly dissatisfied with
> dotsrc.org as a project hosting provider.  We currently have CVS and
> the mail lists there, but I've never moved anything else to their
> servers because they still haven't convinced me that it would be worth
> the effort, even when sourceforge was having serious reliability
> troubles. Lately they have been taking longer and longer to respond to
> support requests, (one request a couple months ago sat there for
> almost two weeks until one of us gave them step-by-step instructions
> on how to do it) and they still haven't started officially supporting
> subversion, something they have saying for years now will be "ready
> soon."
>
> I looked at a number of free alternatives, but they all boil down to
> the same problem - those services that do offer reliable service are
> typically slow (like SF.net), or there's some catch involved (Google
> Code's license restrictions).  So, I started thinking about using my
> own server instead, which has been very snappy and reliable. (It's
> currently hosting http://wxpython.org and http://wiki.wxpython.org,
> and is located at a colocation facility with tier-1 connectivity.) 
> The issue with this idea is that hosting the wxWidgets SVN repository
> (and perhaps eventually the mail lists and web site too) would
> probably take up a fair amount of the resources on my host, and to be
> on the safe side I should probably upgrade my hosting plan, which will
> cost about an extra $15/month.
>
> Which brings me to my question for the community.  How many of you
> feel that it'd be worth donating a few bucks to get, among other
> things, faster source code checkouts and SVN support? (Finally!)  If
> we also move the mail lists and archives then we can switch back to
> Mailman and dump *@^$# ezmlm.
>
> I'd be interested in whether you are willing, and also what amount you
> would feel comfortable in donating.  Ideally it should be an amount
> that doesn't hurt, there should be enough people donating that
> everybody could contribute just the cost of a few lattes and we would
> have plenty and some to spare.  No need to think of this request as
> making a commitment yet, I just want to get a gut feel for
> feasibility.  We can also discuss other possible solutions.  BTW, most
> of what I paid for the first year of service at my current level was
> paid with contributions that the wxPython users have made, although
> none of them knew that's what the money was going to be used for.
>
> In the meantime, I'll see if I can do a test run of converting a
> snapshot of the CVS repository and setting up the server, so that we
> can get a better feel for resource utilization and response times. 
> The last time I played with converting from CVS to SVN a couple years
> ago, I remember it taking a few hours, but most of that was scripts
> crunching data.  When it was finished, the SVN repo had over 45K
> revisions in it.  So doing it again will be good practice for the real
> thing.
>
Robin,

    Count me in.  Send an email on the details and I'll make a donation.

T. Williams