[MLton] mlton.org server

[Matthew Fluet]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 6:11 PM, Steve Sims <sims at reactive-systems.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Matthew,
> Thanks for trying to get this discussion going again.
>
> On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 3:56 PM, Matthew Fluet <matthew.fluet at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> It occurs to me that something between self-hosting and using a
>> software hosting service is to self-host a software hosting service.
>> That is, run a virtual machine instance on which one installs an
>> instance of GForge (http://gforge.org/gf/) or FusionForge
>> (https://fusionforge.org/).  The (hoped for) reduced administration
>> comes from the fact that the forge installation should handle all of
>> the dependencies on sub-services (web, mailman, VCSs).  But, still,
>> some non-trivial administration overhead.  Also, it requires someone
>> to administer updates to the forge installation, whereas with a
>> software hosting service, such service upgrades would be provided.
>> So, not clear to me whether or not it would be a win.
>
> Self-hosting a forge is an interesting idea.  From a quick first look, the
> concern I would have with that approach would be that the forge tries to be
> all things to all people.  This could potentially make it hard to both
> administer and to use.  For example, go to fusionforge.org and click
> projects.  You get a page with 24 topic links and all but one are empty.  I
> would guess that you could configure this, but with so many moving parts
> (svn, bug tracking, project management, wiki, news, mailing lists, ...) it
> seems like installation and configuration could be a challenge.  But, it may
> all just work out of the box, I have no experience with any of these forges
> so I don't really know.

Yes, fusionforge.org itself is an odd beast.  It is an instance of the
FusionForge platform, but it hosts only the FusionForge project.
http://forge.ocamlcore.org/ is perhaps a better example of the
platform in action.

The hope is that the various moving parts would be sufficiently
integrated with the forge platform that the administration burden is
lessened.  For instance, on Ubuntu 10.04 (and presumably on most
distributions), there is a "gforge" metapackage that pulls in all the
necessary packages (mailman, exim4, postgresql, ...).

> I know you were asking for new ideas :), but just to get a little more
> specific on the hosted approach I proposed before.  The current mlton
> infrastructure provides svn, mailman, web (through a wiki).  I think you
> have mentioned on the list that bug tracking would be nice to add.  I did a
> little web searching and found:
> xp-dev.com - they have a $5 per month plan that gives you Subversion
> hosting, unlimited repositories and users, Trac hosting for bug tracking
> integrated with Subversion, backups, ...  You also get a web interface for
> setting up new repositories (or importing existing ones) and managing users,
> access control, etc.
> dreamhost.com - offers a $7 per month shared hosting plan that offers email,
> unlimited Mailman hosting, web hosting.  Initially I was just looking for
> the Mailman hosting, but it might make sense to host the actual website
> under this also.  They support Wordpress and give shell access.  For and
> extra $15 per month you can upgrade this to a VPS that gives you full root
> access, but they still manage the services such as Mailman.
> I'm not saying that these particular companies would necessarily be the ones
> to go with (I have never used either), but I just wanted to point out that
> for as little as $12 per month you can outsource the installation and
> maintenance of these services to someone else.

Thanks for the pointers.  They do seem to strike a middle ground
between self-hosting and competing with many others on a free hosting
site.  And some Google searching turns up a variety of other hosting
providers.  Of course, having not heard of most of them, it's hard to
measure their stability.

>> Though, it might fit well with a proposed "Standard ML Foundation", though I'm
>> still unclear about the financials/logics of such an arrangement.

Thanks for the information and background.

> I realize that the "Foundation" approach is a rather big hammer for the
> problem of just providing infrastructure for mlton, so  I you guys decide to
> not go that route we could probably find a different way for us to sponsor
> some of the infrastructure if you decide to go with some paid-services.

As you say, I think the big question is buy-in from other groups and
other supporters.

-Matthew