[VFOSSA] Google Code: Ngon or not Ngon?

[Nguyễn Vũ Hưng]

Chào các bác,

Em nghĩ Google Code được/đủ dùng các bác ạ.

Cá nhân em thích Google Code/svn.Chắc tại chưa quen git?

Hy vọng chỉ mình em thế, các bác tân tiến chắc lên github cả rồi.

http://vnfoss.blogspot.com/2013/05/tao-mot-du-moi-tren-google-code.html
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/googlecode

 Google Code is a website which offers free hosting services for open
source projects. It provides the core facilities required by a
community-led open source project. This document is a basic
introduction to getting started with Google Code project hosting.
Hosting service overview
The services provided by Google Code are:
authentication:
anyone with a valid google.com account can use their normal Google
username and password to log into Google Code and access the
functionality. This means that if you use any existing Google web
services such as GMail or Calendar, you already have a Google Code
account. You can control access to your project resources by adding
members to your project using their google.com account.
version control:
Version control systems are used to track changes to project resources
such as documentation and source code. Subversion (often abbreviated
to SVN), Git and Mercurial are available for use in projects. The
version control system is the key to managing changes in project
resources over time, tracking contributions with respect to IPR
management and collaboration between developers.
communications:
Mailing lists and forums are used for project communication. While
Google Code does not include either, they can be linked to from the
project. Google Groups, another member of the Google family, uses the
same authentication system that Google Code uses. The great thing
about Google Groups is that it can be used as a traditional mailing
list, an online forum or an RSS feed; the choice is left up to the
user. This flexibility maximises the chances that any given user will
subscribe to the list.
wiki:
A wiki is provided for simple project documentation. The wiki provided
is functional and flexible, but does not provide very elaborate
functionality. It is not a substitute for a well-managed informational
website, but it is a great resource for developer notes and a basic
project website. One of the biggest advantages of the Google Code wiki
over other project-hosting solutions is that you can edit the content
via a web-based wiki editor or via the project repository. This makes
access to and use of wiki files much more flexible.
issue tracking:
An issue tracker is provided that allows users to report ‘issues’,
whether they be bug reports, feature requests, or installation
problems.
downloads:
The downloads section is a simple area for storing files for download.
These will usually be software releases and documentation packages.
feeds:
Comprehensive RSS and Atom feeds are provided to facilitate monitoring
of the services and gadgets can be used in wiki pages to monitor
external feeds.
group administration functions:
these include the management of project members and the configuration
of the available tools.
Google also provides a number of other services that may be useful to
projects hosted on Google Code, or even elsewhere. There is no
requirement to use them, but it makes sense if you need these
features, since your project members will already be signed in to
their Google account and will therefore benefit from the Google single
sign-on system.
Other useful services that can be linked to from your project site include:
calendar:
useful for tracking project releases, meetings and governance issues
such as votes.
docs and spreadsheets:
sharing documents between project members for collaborative
development is really easy using the docs and spreadsheets
applications.
analytics:
Google Analytics may be enabled for the project in order to monitor web traffic.
Create the project
Creating a Google Code project is done using the online form.
It is worth noting that your project name will form part of the URL
for your project development site, so be sure that the name you enter
is the one you want.
Google also limits the number of licence options available to you. In
their FAQ, they explain this decision as follows:
‘The open source community has been flooded with lots of nearly
identical licenses. We’d like to see projects standardize on the most
popular, time-tested ones. For that reason, we encourage projects that
we host to use one of the licenses listed on our project creation
page. The offered licenses offer enough diversity to meet most
developer needs, while minimizing license proliferation.’
The licences selected by Google are broadly in line with the Open
Source Initiative’s list of licences they believe to be ‘popular and
widely used with strong communities’. There is also the optional
facility to apply a separate, Creative Commons, licence to cover the
non-code assets in the project.
Once you have submitted the details, a new project page will appear in
the Google Code site at http://code.google.com/p/
At this stage, it is worth putting a little more thought into the
summary and description, since they are the first things potential
users see when evaluating a project. The description should elaborate
on the aims of the software and should contain high-level information
written in non-technical language so that newcomers can easily see
whether this project is likely to be of interest. It should also
contain a brief technical overview, to allow specialists in the field
to compare several projects to see which one is best suited to them.
Finally, it should contain a candid evaluation of the state of the
project. If the project is on the drawing board rather than in the
deployment phase, users will appreciate knowing this up front, while
developers will recognise they will be getting in on the ground floor
and therefore may be able to influence important design decisions.
Create the mailing lists/groups
Mailing lists are the most important communication mechanism for
community-led projects. In addition to one or more existing mailing
lists, Google Code can be used with Google Groups, another of the
Google family of applications. One of Google Groups’ most popular
features is that subscribers can use it either as a mailing list or as
a web forum. This is important, as it allows contributors to
participate in a way that is most comfortable for them. Another
important feature of Google Groups is that it can be used to provide
an interface to an existing mailing list, so if you already have a
mailing list in operation, then Google Groups can provide a convenient
interface to it, together with Google’s excellent search capabilities.
If you already have a group or mailing list for your project, enter
the address of a web page describing the list in the ‘discussion
groups’ field. This will ensure that your mailing list information is
displayed on your project’s Google Code page. You can enter more than
one mailing list in the admin form; each of them will appear on the
project page. Note that the page you enter must already exist;
entering information into this field does not create the list for you.
You should also consider providing a mailing list address to receive
activity notifications from Google Code. In this case you enter the
email address rather than a website address. This means that
interested parties are notified by email of new commits and issue
tracker activity. Whether you send these notifications to the same
list as that intended for discussion or whether you set up alternative
lists really depends on the governance of your project. In consensus
driven projects, such as those in the Apache Software Foundation,
notifications will typically go to the open developer mailing list,
whereas in more closed communities they will typically be sent to a
closed list. Google Code allows you to use different lists for each
type of notification. Note that for these mail notifications to work
your mailing list must accept posts from @googlecode.com.
Issue tracker
The Google Code issue tracker allows users to report ‘issues’, whether
they be bug reports, feature requests, or installation problems. The
issue tracker is a public resource and anyone visiting the Google Code
site is able to examine existing issues. However, a major drawback of
Google Code is that users will need a Google account in order to add
issues, add a comment to existing issues, or ‘vote’ for ones they feel
are important. This may be a barrier towards people outside your
initial project team to engage with the project via the issue tracker.
In any case, this is a vital tool for communication between users and
developers and should be utilised as a project-planning tool.
Using the tracker enables project management to prioritise, schedule,
assign and document issues clearly. For many open source projects,
issue trackers represent the collective memory of what problems have
been encountered, by whom, whether they have been addressed, who is
working on them, which future release will contain the changes
required and how important users perceive each issue to be. This
information has a host of technical, legal and administrative uses.
Used well, an issue tracker is key to a project’s good management.
The issue tracker in Google Code is not as feature rich as some in the
marketplace but does have reasonable customisation options. If your
project is of a considerable size it could be argued that the Google
Code tracker is insufficient. There are also concerns that the data in
the tracker is not currently exportable, so if you move from Google
Code in the future you may find it difficult to migrate your issue
tracker content; though a limited facility to export data from the
issue tracker is available, at present it seems to be limited just to
the header information, not the content of the discussions. However,
the issue tracker is quick and easy to set up and, perhaps most
importantly for new users, it is simple, with none of the potentially
distracting ‘power user’ features of some alternatives. A low barrier
to entry for users wanting to report issues is vital to involving
those users in your work. The Google Code issue tracker does a great
job in this respect.
Version control
Google code offers Subversion, Git and Mercurial version control
systems. These version control systems support distributed development
and track line-by-line changes made to every file and document in the
repository, tracking who made the change, when and why. This
information is vital in tracking intellectual property rights (IPR) in
your project but also allows you to easily manage different versions
of your outputs and to correct mistakes easily.
The use of a public revision control system is critical to open source
projects that wish to engage their user and developer community. It is
through the version control system that cutting-edge users are able to
get the latest development versions of your code and provides the code
against which patches will be supplied.
It is beyond the scope of this document to describe the use of SVN in
open source development. Detailed documentation on the use of
Subversion can be found in the Subversion Book (see resources).
Wiki
The wiki provided by Google Code is somewhat limited when compared to
some of the popular wiki software available. However, it has one
considerable advantage over other wiki tools - it allows content in
the wiki to be edited offline and then committed via SVN. This means
that it is possible to use the wiki in a much more flexible way than
is often possible with a web only interface. Of course, Google Code
also provides a web interface.
Integration
Google appears to be improving the integration of Google Code’s tools.
For example, a documented mechanism is provided to perform updates to
the issue tracker by embedding commands in version control check-in
comments. Such features are very useful in providing an audit trail in
your project.
Other integration features tend to be undocumented and should be
considered alpha (i.e. they may change). For example, issue tracker
descriptions can contain references to wiki pages.
Unfortunately, Google does not publish an API for Google Code. This
makes it difficult for third-party tools to integrate with the
product. However, there are projects working towards creating a better
development environment.
Licensing
By agreeing to the terms of service that Google presents on sign-up to
Google Code, you grant Google rights to distribute any of the material
you upload to your Google Code project. This does not change the
ownership of the material, which will still be yours (if it was
before).
On the project administration page there is a drop-down box to change
the advertised licence of the project. This constrains a project to a
small (but reasonable) subset of open source licences. It also allows
one to apply a second, separate licence to the non-code assets in a
project. Projects should be aware that changing a project’s licence is
not as easy as changing the item in the drop-down box once there is
content in the wiki and repository, since materials will have to be
carefully relicensed. Therefore, careful consideration of the licence
you choose during registration is important. If you would like
assistance with choosing a licence, contact us at OSS Watch.
Alternatives and barriers to Google Code use
First and foremost, you need to be aware that your organisational
policies may advise against (or even forbid) the use of non-approved
third-party services. However, if you intend to open source your
project and you wish to work towards true sustainability via the open
source route, then it is important that your outputs are available to
potential users and community members in an ongoing and sustainable
way, even beyond your initial funding. In many cases, using an
external facility, such as Google Code, will often be easier and
cheaper than creating in-house services for hosting your outputs. OSS
Watch will be able to liaise with your organisational policy makers in
order to establish an acceptable and realistic policy for both your
project and your organisation.
Assuming that there are no organisational barriers to the use of a
third-party system, one must then choose a service to use. A wide
range of commercial and not-for-profit services offer a comparable set
of services to Google Code. Each offers a different set of services
and a different set of conditions on use. They include SourceForge,
GitHub, Savannah, GNA, BerliOS, TuxFamily, Debian Alioth. OSS Watch
will be happy to help your project decide on the appropriate home for
its outputs.
Many projects are initially associated with an institution, which may
consider hosting these services internally. This gives the option of
customisation of the tools with respect to the project needs. Such
hosting has the additional effect of providing a clear link between
the project and the host institution. Such an association may be a
benefit or a restriction depending on the intentions of the project.
For example, strong association with an institution may prevent some
potential contributors from becoming involved, or it may be a
mechanism by which the institution improves its brand in a given area.
It also leaves the project at the mercy of a change of circumstance
within the single institution.
Google Code is generally a good solution for your hosting needs. It is
clean, comfortable to use and focussed. However, the requirement to
have a Google account in order to interact with the project’s issue
tracker can potentially be a barrier for people to engage with the
project. Notwithstanding that Google Code is in general a good
solution for a small to medium sized project that wishes to get up and
running quickly and does not want to be confused by a wealth of tools
that are not always necessary in a community led project.
The OSS Watch briefing note Avoiding abandon-ware: getting to grips
with the open development method provides an overview of best
practices that can be applied when undertaking open development using
services such as Google Code.

-- 
Best Regards,
Nguyen Hung Vu [aka: NVH] (in Vietnamese: Nguyễn Vũ Hưng, グェン　ヒュン　ウー, 阮武興)
vuhung16plus{remove}@gmail.dot.com , YIM: vuhung16 , Skype:
vuhung16plus, twitter: vuhung, MSN: vuhung16.
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