What is acceptable as 'open-source'? [was Python vs C++]

[Frank Millman]

"Ian Kelly" <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:CALwzidkRO_hrYamwXBk0go-w1OJ6Ty6mYB_c5vHXB6okGOLg6g at mail.gmail.com...
>
> Ugh. There seems to be no public repository, and the only source to be
> found is from release-versioned tarballs, so there's apparently no
> collaboration other than some forums for reporting bugs and requesting
> features. All the work is done by one developer in his spare time, and
> he is currently on hiatus since April. Meanwhile the most recent
> release is February, so it's not like somebody could just pick it up
> and start hacking and expect to merge.
>
> That's only open-source under the most literal of definitions.

This is quite a timely message for me. I am inching closer to releasing a 
version of my accounting software, and a lot of the above comments apply to 
me as well. At present I am the only developer, and my project is not hosted 
anywhere, so I have to decide how to make it available, and I am open to 
suggestions.

I have had two attempts at running an hg repository locally, and I am afraid 
that I am not keeping it up to date. I do have a master copy, but I have 
made so many changes in my clone that a merge will not make any sense, so I 
will have to start afresh. I think that making it public will be the only 
way that I can force myself to update it regularly.

I could stick to hg (or git) but I have recently come across fossil, and it 
seems ideal for my needs. Has anyone used it? It seems to have everything it 
needs (a wiki and a ticketing system) for self-hosting, and I have my own 
domain that I have not activated yet, so maybe I should just use fossil and 
host it myself. Any comments?

There is no test suite (shock, horror). I have not got my head around that 
yet. The things that I could write tests for are so trivial that they don't 
seem worth the effort, and the things that cause me problems are so complex, 
because they depend on exactly what features have been activated, that the 
permutations are endless and I don't know where to start. However, once it 
is public, if someone is prepared to do a bit of mentoring, I will start to 
fill the gap.

Documentation is a mess. I did start using Sphinx a while ago, so there is a 
sprinkling of rest-format docstrings, but they have not been kept 
up-to-date, and in some cases are out of date. There are plenty of other 
comments in the code, mostly reminders to myself about various issues. I 
don't know open-source etiquette. Should I spend the time to sort this out 
before going public, or is it acceptable to leave it as is for now?

Any other comments?

Frank Millman