[SciPy-User] Central File Exchange for SciPy

[Fernando Perez]

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 8:00 AM, william ratcliff
<william.ratcliff at gmail.com> wrote:
> If we could automate it, how much do you think the bandwidth/hosting costs
> would be per month?   Would it be restricted to just code (that is just text
> files, cutoff above a certain size)?  No bug tracking and a simple rating
> system for packages? A section for comments about a given package.  The
> submitter gives it up to 4 tags (for searching) and we start out with a
> given list of topics and let people additional ones later?  People register
> for an account (to reduce spam) or do we just use Openid or Openauth?
> How do we deal with spam?  Do we allow people to sort packages by date?
>  Rating?  Would people want to use Django?   What would we call it?  I'd be
> willing to purchase a domain name and pay for hosting on webfaction to try
> it out.  If it gets too pricey then I may have to ask for help later. (I
> think we should avoid ads).    What would you guys like to call it?

Just a few comments from the sidelines... I think it would be really
great if every snippet had an automatic version control history
associated with it.  For me, the gist model at github is perfect in
this regard.  Consider for example (random gist I found that had numpy
in it):

http://gist.github.com/364369

This very simple page has all the code, a download button, space for
comments, revision history and a 'fork' button.  The last two for me
are very, very important: they plant the seed that allows a simple
script to very easily grow into something larger.  The author has an
easy way to make improvements and track those (with near-zero setup
overhead), and the 'fork' button makes it easy for others to
contribute.

For multi-file projects, the obvious counterpart is obviously a real
repo (github or whatever).

I know it may feel a little harsh to push a specific version control
system, but to me the idea of binding revision history and forking
support as an integral part of a 'file exchange' is actually
important.  I think that we should try not just to replicate matlab's
file exchange website, but rather to do better.  And I think that
pervasive version control 'as a way of life' is actually one
ingredient in the right direction.

In any case, there's zero chance that I'll do any actual work on this,
so consider this idle chat from the peanut gallery :)  I'll be happy
to use anything those actually putting in the real elbow grease can
come up with.

Regards,

f