Stuart Herbert | Gentoo

http://overlays.gentoo.org/

As folks probably know, my Gentoo brainchild this year is the new Gentoo Overlays service, where we provide hosting for project and developer overlays, and (this is the bit that makes it special) we make it possible for users to have commit access to the overlays too. These “Social Workspaces” provide a way for users to get involved in Gentoo, and to get a feel for what it’s like to be a full Gentoo developer, without having to go through the full recruitment process up front.

It feels like we’ve been working on getting this service up and running forever, but I’m happy to say that we’re getting close to having everything ready to officially announce. At the moment, we have:

• overlays.gentoo.org is up and running via HTTP, with the homepage showing RSS feeds from all of the overlays already installed
• We have a number of projects currently using the service.
• We also have a number of developers also using the service.
• Overlays currently come with Trac as the wiki / subversion repo browser, and Subversion as the version control system.
• And (very importantly) we have Gunnar Wrobel’s layman utility to make it easy for users to install overlays and keep them up to date.

In short, we’re almost there. My TODO list before launch currently looks like this:

1. HTTPS support for o.g.o (Action: with Lance atm)
2. Complete the user docs (Action: with Stu atm)
3. GuideXML-ify admin, dev and user docs (Action: with Stu atm, volunteers happily accepted, because I still hate GuideXML)
4. Update homepage template: add links to project & developer homepages (Action: with Stu atm)
5. Subscribe all overlay owners to the overlay owners mailing list, so that when I have important news for them, I can contact them all at once (Action: with Stu atm)

… and then Gentoo Overlays phase 1 should be ready to announce to the world.

Other things that are being worked on, but which aren’t required for the launch, include:

• Support for posting to #gentoo-commits (Action: with Stefan atm
• Support for posting to a -commits list of your choice (Action: with Stu atm

Phase 1 implies that we plan to go further … and indeed we do. Items on the longer-term roadmap currently are:

• Support for GIT
• Support for darcs
• Support for mercurial
• Web-based tool for updating passwords
• Web-based tool for managing group permissions
• Replace the homepage template with something nicer
• Support for tarball downloads of overlays
• Support for rsync downloads of overlays
• Support for Luca’s portage -> overlay sync script (as used by the PHP project)

I’m also on the look-out for any cool ideas that would make the overlays service even better. If you have one, or (Gentoo devs & projects only!) you want an overlay on o.g.o, drop by #gentoo-overlays and say hello.