[MLton] past and future of mlton.org

[Matthew Fluet]

As some may have noticed or inferred, there was an issue with
mlton.org (website, mailing lists, SVN, etc.) over the weekend.  The
long and short of it is that there was some kind of disk problem with
the mlton.org hosting service, but they were able to restore the
virtual private server (VPS) without any data loss and all services
appear to be functioning normally.

Nonetheless, it provided the opportunity to consider and to experiment
with alternative hosting solutions.  Stephen was able to put together
a Google Groups for mlton.org that could host mlton at mlton.org and
mlton-user at mlton.org and also a Google Sites for mlton.org that could
host www.mlton.org, and for a short time over the weekend had DNS
configured to point there.  Below is the thread of discussion about
moving the mlton.org services to an alternative hosting solution.

I think that Stephen's argument is correct: administering a VPS is a
significant overhead, and it holds things back because no one has the
time to do the admin right.  (And, even if someone had the time to do
the admin at the present time, they may not in the future.)  The big
advantage of hosting under Google (or Sourceforge, or ...) is that the
admin is amortized over all hosted projects, to the point where
individual project developers need not concern themselves with the
admin.  Switching to a DVCS was mentioned on the mailing list a few
months ago; its something to consider again, since a major drawback to
switching was the up-front admin of setting up a different VCS.

Thoughts?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:17:53 -0500
Subject: [MLton] mlton.org is OK

The hosting company is bringing the server back online right now.  No data
loss.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:37:29 -0500
Subject: [MLton] mlton.org is back online

I've changed the DNS settings for mlton.org, www.mlton.org, and
svn.mlton.org to point back at the VPS, 69.55.226.86.

If your DNS has got the stale IP, you can check the web site at

 http://69.55.226.86/

It looks fine to me.

I haven't pointed the mail server back to the VPS yet, because I think it
might be an opportune time to switch over to the google groups stuff that I
set up.  It has a lot of advantages (easier management, better reliability,
better archiving) and no real disadvantages that I can see (other than old
messages aren't in the same archive, but maybe that could even be fixed).

In general, I'd like to get out of administering my own VPS, which I think
wastes time and holds things back (because no one has time to do the admin
right).  I've already done it for nameserver and mail.  I think it could be
worth it in the long run to switch the MLton wiki over to google sites too.
But that obviously takes some work.

The only other service that I can think of that mlton.org provides is the
SVN repo (and web interface).  It would be cool if we could move that to a
reasonable turn-key hosted solution too.  We might also consider upgrading
to a more modern version control system.  I'm a big fan of hg, having used
it for a couple of years now.

Anyways, I'll defer to the wishes of the group, but my feeling is that
moving away from the VPS and toward a more group-managed and hosted solution
seems better.

The only immediate decision that needs to be made is whether to migrate the
mail to google groups (basically, invite all the old members to join), or
change the mail handling back to the VPS.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Henry Cejtin <henry.cejtin at sbcglobal.net>
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:12:09 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: [MLton] mlton.org is back online

Excellent  news  about  the MLton data still being around.  I completely
agree that lots of the stuff (like google groups)  makes  sense  in  the
generic  cloud  (although  I  think  that  backups of the mail, wiki and
repository  are  worth  doing  at  various  local  machines   just   for
diversifying the risk).

I have never used mercurial (A.K.A. hg?) but I have certainly heard good
things about it.  What are the advantages over SVN?


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:51:44 -0500
Subject: Re: [MLton] mlton.org is back online

One advantage is that all repositories are created equal -- there's nothing
special about the central repository, other than the convention that that's
where all patches end up eventually.  Using this fact, one can set up
arbitrary workflows and easily work outside the central repository.  E.g.
when mlton.org was down for a few days, people could still commit and share
patches with each other.

Also, it's trivial to install and maintain repositories.

On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 6:12 PM, Henry Cejtin <henry.cejtin at sbcglobal.net>wrote:
> Excellent  news  about  the MLton data still being around.  I completely
> agree that lots of the stuff (like google groups)  makes  sense  in  the
> generic  cloud  (although  I  think  that  backups of the mail, wiki and
> repository  are  worth  doing  at  various  local  machines   just   for
> diversifying the risk).

> I have never used mercurial (A.K.A. hg?) but I have certainly heard good
> things about it.  What are the advantages over SVN?


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Matthew Fluet <matthew.fluet at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:24:21 -0500
Subject: Re: [MLton] mlton.org is back online

On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com> wrote:
> I haven't pointed the mail server back to the VPS yet, because I think it
> might be an opportune time to switch over to the google groups stuff that I
> set up.  It has a lot of advantages (easier management, better reliability,
> better archiving) and no real disadvantages that I can see (other than old
> messages aren't in the same archive, but maybe that could even be fixed).

It looks like importing mailing list archives is an oft-requested, but
unsupported feature of GoogleGroups.  Exporting would be another issue
(if one wanted to take the Google Group archive somewhere else),
though could probably be done with sufficient web-scraping (messages
have a "Show Original" link, so one could accumulate all the raw
text).

> In general, I'd like to get out of administering my own VPS, which I think
> wastes time and holds things back (because no one has time to do the admin
> right).

Agreed.

> I've already done it for nameserver and mail.  I think it could be
> worth it in the long run to switch the MLton wiki over to google sites too.
> But that obviously takes some work.

> The only other service that I can think of that mlton.org provides is the
> SVN repo (and web interface).  It would be cool if we could move that to a
> reasonable turn-key hosted solution too.  We might also consider upgrading
> to a more modern version control system.

One option is to go with Google Code's project hosting.

Some advantages:
* SVN or Mercurial for project code
 * web interface (google custom, not ViewCVS)
* Project wiki with a subset of MoinMoin markup (would make copying
existing wiki relatively easy)
* Integrated issue tracker

Some disadvantages:
* Possible code license issue; Google Code requires choosing one of a
small number of open source licenses, including MIT License and New
BSD License
* Project membership iff code access and wiki access; i.e., no
fine-grain permissions.  [Probably not a major issue; few wiki edits
from non developers.]
* Project wiki loses some of our useful MoinMoin extensions (links to
SVN revisions/files, (good) SML code formatting, SML code pulled from
SVN, ...)
* Dispersal of URLs: mlton.org for mailing lists, mlton.org for one
site, mlton.googlecode.com/ for source repository,
code.google.com/p/mlton for project wiki, issue tracker, etc.

I suspect that the similar sets of pros/cons would arise from any
hosting service.  SourceForge, for which MLton still has a project
presence, would be another logical choice.  Since we left, they do
support a variety of features:
* CVS/SVN/Git/Mercurial/Bazzar
* MediaWiki
* Mailman mailing lists  (Did we import mail into the SourceForge mailing list?)
* VHOST

>  I'm a big fan of hg, having used
> it for a couple of years now.

I've been using Git a little bit, enough to see some of the advantages
of a DVCS, but not enough to argue it over other systems.

> Anyways, I'll defer to the wishes of the group, but my feeling is that
> moving away from the VPS and toward a more group-managed and hosted solution
> seems better.

Agreed.

> The only immediate decision that needs to be made is whether to migrate the
> mail to google groups (basically, invite all the old members to join), or
> change the mail handling back to the VPS.

I'd vote to change the mail handling back to the VPS for the short
term, and then do a single switch of everything.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com>
Date: Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 10:23 PM
Subject: Re: [MLton] mlton.org is back online

> * Dispersal of URLs: mlton.org for mailing lists, mlton.org for one
> site, mlton.googlecode.com/ for source repository,
> code.google.com/p/mlton for project wiki, issue tracker, etc.


This one isn't so bad.  We can make XXX.mlton.org aliases.

> > The only immediate decision that needs to be made is whether to migrate the
> > mail to google groups (basically, invite all the old members to join), or
> > change the mail handling back to the VPS.
>
> I'd vote to change the mail handling back to the VPS for the short
> term, and then do a single switch of everything.

All right.  I switch the MX record back to mlton.org.  It might take up to a
week for some things to catch up.  I await further discussion and a
consensus from the group, at which point I will update the DNS as
appropriate.