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Project Management Infrastructure Redesign 2011
This effort is being tracked by Bug 243223.
Note that this document is not intended to be all inclusive. The combination of this document, the existing Developer Portal Use Cases, and the Eclipse Development Process form a more complete picture.
Contents
Problem Statement
Current infrastructure (i.e. The Developer Portal) is inadequate.
Data concerning projects, people, organizations, members, and more is spread across multiple, separate data sources. This makes querying across data challenging. In some cases, data is replicated from one database to another to facilitate some queries while providing an added layer of protection. The database that contains committer information, the so-called "Foundation" database, is kept separate from other systems to provide an added layer of protection against private data being compromised. Bits of that database are replicated into an "Eclipse" database for access from the public website.
Portal is separate from the the resources being managed; this requires a context switch to use. The content displayed in the project summary pages, for example, comes from the portal. When a committer notices that the data in the project summary is incorrect, they must switch into the portal to make the change. Most committers have difficulty (or outright refuse) to make that context switch.
Some management tasks are spread out. Specifying a description for a project, for example, requires that an HTML file be created in the project directory (requires CVS check-in), and then the specification of a URL in the portal. This is very difficult to maintain as it is separated from where and how the description is used, and requires multiple steps with multiple tools to complete. As a result, descriptions tend to be poorly specified, and rarely maintained.
Too much information is not included in or managed by the portal. Project proposals, review documentation, IP logs, are all separate.
Technology Choices
Moved to Project Management Infrastructure/Technology Choices.
Roles
- EMO(ED) - EMO Executive Directory (i.e. Mike)
- EMO(PM) - EMO Project Manager (i.e. Wayne)
- EMO(LC) - EMO Legal Council (i.e. Janet)
- EMO(IP) - EMO Intellectual Property Team
- Proposer
- Committer
Communication Channels
The communication channels used by the system are expected to change with time as technologies and communities evolve. Favoured technologies of the day are Twitter, RSS, and the eclipse.proposals forum.
Technology
Drupal
Drupal 7.2 is used for initial implementation.
LDAP
The new system will use LDAP for user authentication and for some aspects of authorization. This implementation will be based on work being done in bug 364605 that intends to standardize the entire eclipse.org infrastructure on the LDAP (Bugzilla-based authentication is used for most eclipse.org properties; LDAP is currently only used for committer authentication).
LDAP groups are used for project-based authorization. Users who have committer access to a project are members of an LDAP group that corresponds to the project. This group membership is bound to Drupal authentication via Drupal "organic groups" functionality. Additional authorization schemes are required to handle PMC-access to projects and other corner cases. For more information, see bug 363614.
Themes
Moved to Project Management Infrastructure.
Requirements and Implementation
Moved to Project Management Infrastructure/Development.
Overview and Design
Moved to Project Management Infrastructure/Overview and Design.
Structure
Moved to Project Management Infrastructure/Development.
Application Lifecycle Management
Moved to Project Management Infrastructure/Development.
Schedule
April 2/2012 - Phase I beta-testing for projects.eclipse.org and PolarSys. Support for maintaining and disseminating project and release information, project proposals, and committer and project lead elections.
May 21/2012 - Phase II beta-testing for projects.eclipse.org and PolarSys. Support for user dashboard, email notification, simultaneous release tracking,
July 2/2012 - Go-live for Eclipse.org