Thanks much Ben. See you on the other side.
On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 2:29 PM, Ben Domenico <bendomenico@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Thanks for the very thoughtful and thought provoking farewell note.
>
> Godspeed, John Caron.
>
> -- Ben
>
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 1:06 PM, John Caron <caron@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Today on my last day at Unidata, I want to add a few thoughts about the
>> future of THREDDS and netCDF.
>>
>> Software lives and dies by the ability of its users to get questions
>> answered and bugs fixed and possibly features added. While support from
>> Unidata is solid, it is by no means guaranteed. Its crucial that we
>> continue to foster and develop a community of contributors to THREDDS and
>> netCDF from outside Unidata. Since I am now becoming one, these issues
>> are front and center for me.
>>
>> 1) For software revision control and making contributions easy, I think
>> we are in good shape. Workflows using git have made a huge difference
>> everywhere in Open Source Software (OSS) in the last several years. Unidata
>> now has all of its important software source code publicly available on
>> github. Of course theres always much more that could be done to document
>> code and design decisions.
>>
>> 2) For question asking / answering I think we need to move away from
>> private conversations using esupport, and use public forums where all can
>> read and contribute to the conversation. Here are my recommendations:
>>
>> - Use the mailing lists (thredds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
>> netcdf-java@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) for (almost) all questions about using
>> the software. These conversations are public so that everyone may benefit
>> from seeing what questions are being asked and answered, and also to share
>> their own experiences or to provide answers.
>> -
>> - Use the private esupport ticket system (
>> support-thredds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, support-netcdf-java@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
>> only for sensitive matters that need to be private (even then, if you dont
>> want the question publically archived, you have to say that in the
>> ticket).
>> Note that others (for example me), wont read or comment on your
>> conversation.
>> -
>> - Use GitHub issues (https://github.com/Unidata/thredds/issues) if
>> you are using the source code in some way, eg sending pull requests, or
>> for
>> questions/comments about the source code.
>> -
>> - Its also possible to use stack exchange (eg
>> http://stackexchange.com/search?q=thredds), but we dont yet have a
>> clear workflow around that. Id like to see a specific stack exchange forum
>> become the place for all scientic data formats / access protocols (HDF,
>> netCDF, opendap, OGC, CF, etc). We need a critical mass for this to work.
>> It would be good if stack exchange or some spin-off would specialize in
>> software support.
>>
>>
>> 3) Issue tracking in JIRA is ok for now (
>> https://bugtracking.unidata.ucar.edu/browse/TDS), though maybe github
>> could be used. We need a system for allowing non-Unidata users to add
>> issues and comment on existing issues.
>>
>> 4) Static analysis with Coverity (
>> https://scan.coverity.com/projects/388?tab=overview) is very useful for
>> code quality checking, and is free for OSS.
>>
>> 5) Unit testing and Continuous Integration (CI) are not completely solved
>> problems. We use Jenkins and Travis, but these are not public (Jenkins) or
>> complete (Travis). The THREDDS group is continuing to investigate long
>> term, public, scaleable solutions for this.
>>
>> In summary, software development tools and infrastructure have become
>> much more mature and rich in the last 10 years. OSS has coalesced around
>> certain technologies like git and stack exchange. Im looking forward to
>> the continued evolution of this ecosystem in the next 10 years. We as a
>> community want to track best practices and evolve along with it.
>>
>> John
>>
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>
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