Dear Jonathan, List,
I think these changes will be an improvement in how we handle evolving CF. Your assessment is sound in my eyes and I think these changes will bring substantial benefits. Thanks for the hard work and attention to detail.
Cheers,
Daniel
> -----Original Message-----
> From: CF-metadata <cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu> On Behalf Of
> Jonathan Gregory
> Sent: Friday 22 March 2019 17:58
> To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
> Subject: [CF-metadata] proposed migration of these discussions to GitHub
>
> 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.)
> _______________________________________________
> CF-metadata mailing list
> CF-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
> http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
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Received on Mon Mar 25 2019 - 08:48:12 GMT
