Author Topic: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020  (Read 29446 times)

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4711
  • Karma: +41/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« on: December 31, 2019, 08:56:25 pm »
Hi

I had been wondering what can be do as a community on 2020 to help supporting our platform.
OS2World is going to be 20 years old on 2020 and we usually work on helping each other on the forums, publishing news, trying to consolidate documentation and knowledge (wiki) and in general supporting the OS/2 platform.

But what do you think we should try to do different and/or improve  for the next years?

Any draft, idea, thought is welcome for the brainstorm.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

Andreas Schnellbacher

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 827
  • Karma: +14/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #1 on: December 31, 2019, 09:57:04 pm »
The main answer is simple: Do that, what our main producer, Arca Noae, doesn't and what is valuable for us.

About the details:
  • Sample lists of working and recent hardware. Do we already have more reports than working hardware components?
  • Sample lists of utilities that are missing in recent ArcaOS installations.
  • Produce reviews about them.
  • Produce any review.
Additional thoughts:
  • Also a documentation about installing ArcaOS from USB stick would probably be helpful for many. That's a relative new feature and is probably not known by everyone.
  • The new update and upcoming upgrade features need also reviews.
  • SaMBa is still unknown to many. Reports may help.

Dariusz Piatkowski

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1317
  • Karma: +26/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #2 on: January 01, 2020, 04:23:42 pm »
Martin, everyone...: Happy New Year to all!

Hmm, excellent question you pose. Here are a few wishes I have (some of this I've voiced in the past as well):

1) Development
- can we pick-up from where EDM/2 left-off?
- I know some effort has been made, but does anyone today really know "who knows what" (from a technical/dev perspective) on our platform?
- Yes, there are a couple of core groups (BWW and AN), but who does what, who knows what?
- Along with this really comes the notion of "can anyone build/write-up instructions to create a robust OS/2 development environment?" we can all use?

2) RPM
- it feels like we would do ourselves a favour by migrating as much of what we currently have to RPMs, so is there a way for all of us to engage in the RPM-Migration effort?
- if this is doable, how do we support that effort with the right platform? I'm thinking an actual central repository of OS2World activities, say os2world-rel & os2world-exp? These should not double up on what's already being done elsewhere, instead these should be anciliary

3) Testing
- a bit of a follow-up to the RPM above, but if you take a look at everything that's sitting out there on netlabs-exp right now you've got a list of about 15 packages I think...many of them have been in the netlabs-exp repo for quite some time...so is that b/c the testing is slow to move these to -rel?
- perhaps we could help with the testing efforts?
- right now I (personally) have absolutely ZERO idea how the current team does the testing and what actually causes a package to be pushed from -exp to -rel status
- this is a lot of manual effort, which means body count matters, and that's precisely where we could all help

-Dariusz

EDIT
====
From a "who done it an how" perspective I'd be happy to sign-up for a "How to configure RSYNC" article. I am currently going through this on my machine, both LOCAL and NETWORKED runs, so I think I should be able to pull some stuff together. Do we just toss this out into OS2World Wiki => HowTo pages (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Category:How_To)?
« Last Edit: January 01, 2020, 07:08:01 pm by Dariusz Piatkowski »

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4711
  • Karma: +41/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2020, 09:41:38 pm »
From a "who done it an how" perspective I'd be happy to sign-up for a "How to configure RSYNC" article. I am currently going through this on my machine, both LOCAL and NETWORKED runs, so I think I should be able to pull some stuff together. Do we just toss this out into OS2World Wiki => HowTo pages (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Category:How_To)?

Hi Dariusz.
Free free to toss it to the "HowTo pages" on the wiki, I will also review it and make any format change so it can be correctly displayed. Let me know if you need any help with the Wiki.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4711
  • Karma: +41/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2020, 10:03:46 pm »
Happy New Year !!!

Thanks for sharing your ideas.  I really like some of those, and I would like to help in some.
I would not like to reply on each idea yet, maybe each one require a new thread.

Let's keep brainstorming.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

Dave Yeo

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4787
  • Karma: +99/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2020, 12:20:16 am »
Hi Dariusz, Happy new decade.
For number one, there is some stuff on Netlabs that could be copied/formatted for edm. Porting, RPM usage comes to mind.
What do you mean by a development environment? There's so many depending on what is being developed. One thing that would be nice, if RPM supports it, are meta-packages, so you install the GCC or Unix porting develp meta-package and it pulls in all needed stuff as dependencies.
For number two, seems like a good idea as long as avoiding RPM hell, so RPM's have to be tested and maintained.
For number three, testing is always a good idea. some things are simple and some aren't. For example, the new NSPR and NSS are stuck in limbo as they seem to make the Mozilla apps unstable and the updated NSS breaks some HTTPS sites with old versions like FF 38ESR. Ideally is not just testing but fixing. Silvan seems to be doing most of the work on a volunteer basis and while he has been doing a good job, he only has so much time and energy. Things like the browser just silently vanishing are hard to debug too.

Doug Clark

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 306
  • Karma: +7/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #6 on: January 02, 2020, 06:16:33 am »
I am coming to appreciate the power of RPM more and more. But what we really have are two "standard" installation techniques that don't talk to each other: WarpIN and RPM. WarpIN in many ways is the the friendlier of the two, but its two level database (OS2 INI files) really isn't powerful enough to handle large applications and packages.  With RPM/APM I don't know how to find out where stuff gets installed, and since so much is automatically installed I have found myself installing something with WarpIN that turned out to be already installed via RPM. And as far as I know there is no uninstall in RPM/APM.

The other issue with RPM is how to package the product and where to place the RPM packages so that they can be found. With WarpIN you just create an archive and upload to Hobbes.

Recognizing that I don't know much at all about RPM or its database, or how realistic this is, perhaps for 2020 we get a modified WarpIN that uses the same database RPM uses for storing info about its applications and packages.

Dave Yeo

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4787
  • Karma: +99/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2020, 06:38:44 am »
RPM does do uninstalls, yum uninstall package or right click in ANPM and choose uninstall. Can also downgrade much the same way. The problem at times is dependencies, try to uninstall something and RPM will also uninstall its dependencies after asking. Generally if something is available as an RPM and Warpin package, it's likely the RPM one is what you want to use.
There's directions on packaging on Netlabs and it is possible to install an RPM file or create your own repository, not for the faint of heart though.
There is ongoing work to also handle Warpin with ANPM, the beta I'm using is capable of it to a degree. The problem is that there are so many assorted Warpin packages that they'll never all be supported and I believe Arca Noae's plan is to have a Warpin repository for subscribers. The actual databases will likely never be merged.

Dariusz Piatkowski

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1317
  • Karma: +26/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2020, 04:20:07 pm »
Hi Martin,
Free free to toss it to the "HowTo pages" on the wiki, I will also review it and make any format change so it can be correctly displayed. Let me know if you need any help with the Wiki.
Regards

OK, I will get cracking on that within the next day or so. I do after all want to have a successfull RSYNC run here before I claim to "know it all" and proceed to share my wisdom with the crowd eh? LOL

Dariusz Piatkowski

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1317
  • Karma: +26/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #9 on: January 02, 2020, 04:41:32 pm »
Hi Dave!

Let me split up the response into multiple sub-sections.

For number one, there is some stuff on Netlabs that could be copied/formatted for edm. Porting, RPM usage comes to mind.

So do we still own/maintain EDM/2? I know the site is still up and chugging away, but it's unclear who actually has the current responsibility, is it netlabs? On the 'Contribute - EDM2' page (http://www.edm2.com/index.php/Contribute) you can find the following section:

Code: [Select]
Access to EDM/2 Wiki

You can write to this wiki with a netlabs.org user ID, to get that visit http://www.netlabs.org/site/member/

If anything is wrong please contact ktk@netlabs.org.

...but based on what I found on netlabs.org (following that provided link) I did not see anything specific to EDM/2 contributions.

...
What do you mean by a development environment? There's so many depending on what is being developed. One thing that would be nice, if RPM supports it, are meta-packages, so you install the GCC or Unix porting develp meta-package and it pulls in all needed stuff as dependencies.

Dave, you bet, that was absolutely my thinking. The idea being that we could basicall build a DEV-environment-install-template for each different configuration. So for example: I have VACPP here, along with Watcom and GCC stuff. As I periodically attempt to do things I manage with that type of template based definition which is built around the Visual SlickEdit project functionality. However, that only allows me to deal with PATHs, environment variables, etc...that does not handle the spelling out of what actual toolsets are required.

So in the case of VACPP, or Watcom that's fairly self-explanatory: you install the application and run from there. But GCC...oh boy, that's another thing altogether. I do not mean just the plain vanilla install either. I am talking about all the pieces needed to attempt to migrate anything bigger than the basic Linux type codebase.

...For number two, seems like a good idea as long as avoiding RPM hell, so RPM's have to be tested and maintained...

Well, I completely agree. To make this happen however it feels like we basically need good ol' traditional Project Management. A way to assign different folks to different tasks. Since I have no visibility to how teams like BWW or even AN do this type of transactional detail, I have no idea if there are some best-practice type of approaches we could take. Heck, I'd love for us to be able to come in with OS2World testing 'army' that could take on some of the less complex testing efforts. This is where the beauty of community based engagement would really pay off.

...For number three, testing is always a good idea. some things are simple and some aren't. For example, the new NSPR and NSS are stuck in limbo as they seem to make the Mozilla apps unstable and the updated NSS breaks some HTTPS sites with old versions like FF 38ESR. Ideally is not just testing but fixing. Silvan seems to be doing most of the work on a volunteer basis...

Right, so the 'OS2World' testing army concept is how I see us being able to make a positive contribution in some of these efforts. We do something similar to this already on the AN Tester List, but that's mostly been unit-level testing with some sprinkling of integration testing (this comment is based only on my personal experience with what I have tested - I realize others are much more engaged and do things like full AN OS installs, etc.).

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4711
  • Karma: +41/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #10 on: January 02, 2020, 04:59:23 pm »
Hi

I want to give a further opinion on some of the post which are very interesting to me.

-
Quote
Sample lists of working and recent hardware. Do we already have more reports than working hardware components?
Yes, I like that a lot.   My doubt still remains "how"?
I had been trying to document hardware running no ArcaOS every time opportunity appears, but creating a wiki page on the OS2World wiki (some example). When someone post on the forum about a new machine I ask for the pci.exe report to try to enhance the description on the page. Sadly it is not very effective since it is a not formal campaign, i don't have the man power to focus on that, and it is very reactive.

I liked a past approach were eCo used to ask every week for different reports, but I wanted to do something more collaborative (under a Creative Commons license) and where you can add more details. People also tell me that a Wiki is not the best tool to do hardware reports, but it is simple enough for me.

So, the opening for leading the community on hardware reports is open  ;D

-
Quote
Sample lists of utilities that are missing in recent ArcaOS installations.
Good one. Os2World forums is always open for people requesting things or posting different ideas, but I think we lack the consolidation effort on what utilities should be on the top of the wishlist... It sound interesting too.

-
Quote
Also a documentation about...
Documentation on any topic related to ArcaOS (How To, Reviews, Bug workarronds, Tips, Tricks) are always welcome, and this time, the OS2World wiki is a good tool for it. Maybe more efforts are needed on trying to get more people writing and after that communicating the new stuff that can be read.

-
Quote
RPM
I also find interesting try to consolidate the RPM servers with more OS/2 software. I even made some tests to create rpm packages for some games, but since we still do not have a community RPM server (beside Netlabs) I found it discouraging to continue packaging this with RPM.
- I think we need a friendly (more relaxed) rpm server on where to upload packages like games, tools, etc with a simple process on how to upload things to it.
- Also, we need a backup place that replicates and preserve the rpm packages in different places, just to be sure no more files get erased with time.
I think it will be worthy to put more efforts on creating more rpm packages for software that is already available to simplify the installation process.

Very interesting brainstorming, please keep posting any ideas of what the community can help within the platform.

Regards
« Last Edit: January 02, 2020, 06:52:20 pm by Martin Iturbide »
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4711
  • Karma: +41/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #11 on: January 02, 2020, 05:03:01 pm »
So do we still own/maintain EDM/2? I know the site is still up and chugging away, but it's unclear who actually has the current responsibility, is it netlabs? On the 'Contribute - EDM2' page (http://www.edm2.com/index.php/Contribute)...

Hi
About EDM/2. The final responsibility on it is on Adrian from Netlabs.  I have some administration rights and I work on that wiki weekly trying to consolidate the documentation. But registering new users can only do it Adrian.

Let me know any idea you have for the EDM/2 wiki, I will be happy to provide help/advice/moral support, etc.
There used to be some monthly news I used to post about EDM/2 news and updates, but I have failed to continue announcing that.  Maybe because I reached the level when I had republished and linked as much as I was able to find and now I'm more focus on trying to complete the "OS/2 API Project" (which tries to describe all the functions of the OS/2 components).

Regards
« Last Edit: January 02, 2020, 05:06:19 pm by Martin Iturbide »
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4711
  • Karma: +41/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #12 on: January 19, 2020, 05:38:54 pm »
Hi

Maybe it is time to sent an open letter to Ginni Rometty (IBM's CEO) to try again to request some OS/2 components to be open sourced.
We can turn it into a habit that every CEO since Lou Gertner should get an Open Source OS/2 related letter.  :D :D

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

Doug Bissett

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1593
  • Karma: +4/-2
    • View Profile
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #13 on: January 19, 2020, 06:56:23 pm »
Hi

Maybe it is time to sent an open letter to Ginni Rometty (IBM's CEO) to try again to request some OS/2 components to be open sourced.
We can turn it into a habit that every CEO since Lou Gertner should get an Open Source OS/2 related letter.  :D :D

Regards

Have you ever heard the expression "Don't annoy the lion"? IBM's upper management, today, probably never even heard about OS/2, and annoying them could easily bring it to their attention, and they would likely kill it completely to get rid of the annoyance. Open sourcing OS/2 would be an expensive project, for IBM's lawyers, and IBM isn't interested in spending money that it doesn't have to spend.  Arca Noae has got permission to patch, and distribute patched versions of, IBM software. Not as good as open source, but better than we ever had before. Don't rock the boat.

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4711
  • Karma: +41/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Re: Community Ideas BrainStorm for 2020
« Reply #14 on: January 19, 2020, 07:34:06 pm »
Like always, thanks for your positive words DougB, you are motivating me more to do it now.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.