Dear all
As you know, CF currently uses this email list for discussion of standard name
proposals and all other matters except for proposals to change the conventions.
For the latter, we have been using trac for years, but have recently completed
migration of that function to GitHub. The source of the CF conventions document
is now in GitHub and version 1.7 was generated from it. In future, proposed
conventions changes will be discussed as GitHub issues on the conventions
repository, and the changes in wording will be finalised in pull requests. This
is convenient because it provides continuity from the discussion to the
modified document. We are due to prepare and release version 1.8, freeze trac
and publish guidelines for using GitHub in future for conventions changes.
One of the reasons this has not yet been done is that it's important to keep
everyone informed of conventions changes. For a while, postings to the GitHub
conventions repository were sent to the subscribers to this email list, but as
you remember there were complaints about the amount of traffic, and some
confusions were caused by people replying to GitHub by email, so the email feed
was switched off while there was further discussion on the CF committee of how
to proceed.
Now we would like to present a new proposal, as follows:
* To change to using GitHub for standard name proposals and all other matters,
as issues in a different repository from the conventions (probably called
"discuss"). If we make this change, anyone who wishes to make a new standard
name proposal or start a discussion thread about something else will need a
GitHub username, and will log on to GitHub and post it there as a new GitHub
issue. This is not difficult (see below). It does not involve any of the
complexity of git for making updates to a repository as this will be a place
solely to hold discussions and keep an archive of them.
* To make sure that all existing subscribers to this list are kept in touch,
postings to the GitHub issues in the discuss and conventions repositories will
be distributed via email, initially to all subscribers to this email list.
Their subject lines will begin with [cf-metadata/discuss] and
[cf-metadata/conventions]. However, it will no longer be possible to reply to
them on this email list. The archives will be kept and also copied to
GitHub. To comment on a standard name proposal or other discussion, there will
be two options:
* Either you can log onto GitHub and add to the issue in the discuss
repository,
* Or you can *unsubscribe* from the broadcast emails (instructions will be
given for that), and instead *watch* the GitHub discuss repository. That means
you will receive the updates to issues by email from GitHub, rather than via an
email list, and you can then reply to GitHub by email. Your reply is magically
posted on GitHub. That facility means that you can carry out a discussion of an
issue entirely by email, once it's started, not much differently from an email
list.
We do not wish to lose members of the CF community who are subscribed to this
list and remain interested in CF. The main reason for my writing this now is
to ask whether there are subscribers who would "leave" us because it's off-
putting to use GitHub. Please say if that is what you think before 8th April.
Among the advantages of making this change are that
* It would allow you to be selective, in that you could chose to be notified
about conventions but not standard names, or vice-versa, on GitHub. Of course,
we recommending watching both of them!
* We won't have to maintain a CF email list, which is an administrative
complexity, especially as we currently have two different lists (for trac and
email), which have to be kept consistent manually. Anyone can join GitHub for
themselves and watch the CF repositories.
Best wishes and thanks for your interest in CF
Jonathan
To get a username on GitHub, go to
https://github.com/ and sign up. This is
free! Once you have a username, you can sign in.
The issues on the CF conventions repository are at
https://github.com/cf-convention/cf-conventions/issues
This shows the list of changes to 1.7 which are being discussed. (NB the name
of this repository will probably change, to improve consistency, and this is
not the repository for the standard name discussions, which we have not yet
created.) If you wanted to start a new issue, which is like a new email thread
e.g. for a standard name proposal, you would click the "New issue" button, and
get from there to a web form where you type plain text, and then "Submit" it.
To comment on an issue (like replying to an email thread) you click on the
issue, go the bottom of the page, write in the box, and press "Comment".
To receive emails containing comments on any of the issues contributed by
others, you can "watch" the repository, by clicking on the drop-down menu
labelled "Watch" at the top of the page, with an icon like an eye. When you
receive such an email, you can reply to it and your reply will be posted to the
issue. (It tells you at the bottom of the email that you can do this, and gives
you the URL of the comment that's been sent in the the email in case you want
to do it on GitHub.)
Received on Fri Mar 22 2019 - 10:57:46 GMT
