Topic: Organizing Contrib List

[asjunk]

Perhaps I've completely missed it, but I can't seem to find a complete list of all the contribs anywhere on this site.  Instead, I get a directory of contribs by author, which is a great way to give authors kudos, but not necessarily a great way to organize content for "newbies."

What I would like to see is a listing of all the contribs, which versions of SME they're compatible with, the date submitted, and the author.

Perhaps this is up on the site and I've missed it -- I wouldn't be surprised!  

[Chrille]

Hi,

I suppose you have checked http://no.longer.valid/mylinks/ ?? "Web Links" to the left.

There you have the contribs sorted in catogories and you see date, version they are compatible with, and author.

Not a complete list, but not the directory sorted by auther you have found.

/Chrille

[asjunk]

Hi,

I suppose you have checked http://no.longer.valid/mylinks/ ?? "Web Links" to the left.

There you have the contribs sorted in catogories and you see date, version they are compatible with, and author.

Not a complete list, but not the directory sorted by auther you have found.

/Chrille

Yes -- many thanks for the pointer.  It's definitely a good start, but only contains a small portion of the contribs available (even available via the contribs.org FTP server!)  I'd like to see all the contribs organized, put into a database, made easily searchable, etc.

It's absolutely wonderful to have so many packages to choose from -- it's just sometimes difficult to find 'em and figure out if the packages are going to work for the server(s) you're running!

[RonM]

Hi - this is something that has been asked for many times, and a few folks are working on a browseable list (i.e. , click on Antivirus then click on Kaspersky, etc.)There'll be a spot for feedback, and if the community ever agrees on a process for "certifying" contribs, there's a spot for that, too. Hopefully there'll be something to use in a few weeks.

But it's harder than it looks - some contribs are hosted here, some elsewhere. Links are continually changing. Some were linked from e-smith.org, some never were. Some are how tos only, some have rpms, some are only rpms. Some are fresh, some haven't been updated in a long time. etc. All of the work to get them into the list, or update them, is manual. It seems unlikely that we'll ever get "all contribs" into it. Hopefully the core ones that many people use. We're going to need a lot of help from the community, to tell us about broken links, updates, etc.

So, the upshot is that the weblinks are going to have to be the spot where "all contribs" are available. If something is not there, contact the author and ask if they want to put it in! It's by far the easiest way to let people know about it.

[smeghead]

RonM

May I suggest requesting info/howto/doc from any contributor that has an rpm posted that is lacking some or all of these.

When the list is put up there would be more detail to hand (perhaps send a small survey to each contributor asking the basics, such as: SME version req, format of item (rpm, script, tarball, etc), deps req & location, docs avail & where, howto avail & where, who to credit, who to contact.

It might also pay to rate item for ease of installation and potential to produce problems (particularly clashing with other packages) - perhaps the use of a warning flag for those more complex items?

HTH

[RonM]

Good ideas - that's kind of what I'm hoping the community will provide - if you use a how to, take a minute and make a note of: did it work, what you installed it on, did it seem pretty easy or what, where you found more info, etc. Each is linked to a wiki page so folks can put that stuff in.

This way, instead of getting what I think, folks can see what actually happened when someone else tried the install. Better, no ?

There's still a lot of details to work out, though.