[Scummvm-devel] What is happening to the ScummVM team?

[Jordi Vilalta]

2009/2/13 Max Horn <max at quendi.de>:
> So, I think I should, for the benefit of myself and the project,
> reduce my role and get others to work on stuff. For starters, we need:
>
> * a forum admin (or ateam) who also will look into upgrading our phpB2
> (mainly for security reasons, phpBB2 gets no security fixes anymore --
> in fact till very recently we had an old outdated version installed,
> too)
> * a wiki adming (or team) who does the same for the wiki: Installing
> security fixes, and stuff

While looking for Vex's "Developer web" information I've found some
documentation on the "Hosted Apps":
http://apps.sourceforge.net/trac/sitedocs/wiki/Hosted%20Apps

MediaWiki and phpBB are already offered. I remember seeing someone in
ScummVM mentioning them but I don't remember whether using them was
considered. It looks like an interesting option: they handle the
maintainance and updates, while I guess they leave some administration
options open (like changing the skins).

> * another mailman list moderator or two wouldn't hurt, volunteers?

What does this work consist on? I may be able to help with this.

> There are probably more things, I'll mention them as they pop to my
> mind.

I like the idea of splitting the management responsabilities, and
having more than one people to work on the same task (as it's
suggested in the mailman case, for example) seems interesting, so
there's higher probability someone will be able to handle it.

> Oh, and it would be nice to have some people who actively drive
> improving ScummVM. Like, not just fixing bugs and adding engines, but
> people who actively work on bigger stuff (and that includes finding
> others to help with it, not just doing it alone), like
> * getting 16 bit gfx support in
> * revamping the midi/music driver stuff
> * finally getting that keymapper / vkeybd stuff into a usable state,
> somehow (maybe requires a rewrite, dunno)
> * thinking about GSoC projects (new GSoC is around)
> * coming up with new ways to improve ScummVM and working towards that
> goal, actively

It looks interesting. Maybe using the appropriate tools would help
with this kind of stuff. For example, I think we should have a unified
place where to track desired feature enhancements. Currently some of
them are on the TODO wiki page, others are on the OpenTasks wiki page,
others have their own wiki page, others are in some users' wiki pages,
others are in SourceForge's feature requests tracker... I really like
the format of the current OpenTasks page, but it isn't dynamic enough
(one can't sort tasks by priority or add comments easily, for
example). It would also be interesting to have some kind of vote
system (for the devs) to see which are the most desired features.

I think trac (also listed in "Hosted apps") could be a good candidate
(there are probably better ones, but it's the one I know). It has a
simple but interesting roadmap system where you can associate generic
"tickets" (which can be either bugs or tasks, for example) to a
release, and it tracks the "release progress" depending on the
associated tickets status. The pidgin team is using it to track the
progress of big features or branches, in addition to releases. I could
have a look at preparing it, if there's interest. If people don't like
it in the end it seems there's an opt-out option which would leave it
as it was ;)