Subject: [Tools-team] Memory notes from TOOLS lunch meeting.

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 02:08:03 +0200

Here are some notes from our lunch meeting.  I've probably
missed things, so feel free to supplement this if you note
an omission.

While waiting for Harald:

* There are currently 2 issue tracking tools used within
  the IETF: RT and Roundup.  RT is a more general ticket
  handling tool, while roundup is focussed on issue tracking
  in particular.
  Some WGs have RT issue trackers hosted here:
     http://rt.psg.com/

  and some have Roundup issue trackers hosted here:
     http://mip4.org/issues/tracker/
  and here:
     https://roundup.machshav.com/

  The roundup tracker hosted at mip4.org has been modified
  to tie into WG mailing lists, so all comments on a particular
  issue on the list are added to the tracker, with smart
  abbreviation of long quoted parts of the message.

* It will be interesting to hear from the tools developers
  within the w3c about which kind of tools they have found
  helpful, and which tools they have decided to use/develop.
  Lary has initiated contact about this, and Harald has asked
  (??? I forgot the name) to contact us about this, too.

When Harald arrived, we covered (at least) the following:

* Admin Restructuring Influence.
  The administrative restructuring announced by Harald yesterday
  influences the work of the tools team over the coming 6 months
  or so.  The focus will be on tools for the secretariat.  Tools
  implemented for the secretariat may have to be re-implemented
  for or by a new contractor at the beginning of 2005, and the
  tools team will be important in making this possible.

* Open Source vs. Commercial
  We're not to be religious about this - if there exists a
  commercial tool which will do a job well, and we can get a
  preferrably free licence, we shouldn't re-develop an
  alternative tool.  If there exists an open-source tool with
  comparable performance, that is to be preferred, however.
  We need to think about not again getting into the situation
  where administrative changes, internally or otherwhere, makes
  it necessary to replace, possibly re-develop, a tool we have
  already developed or adapted once.

* Programmatic interfaces.
  Wherever possible and reasonable, we should prefer
  implementations which makes programmatic interfaces (in a
  wide sense) to the various tools available.  As an example
  Harald mentioned the fact that the RFC editor is now making
  the list of RFCs available in XML format.

After the general breakup I went over a few more points with
Harald:

* For the ID-submission tool, we should go forward by having the
  secretariat put together a list of their internal
  requirements, while we put together a list of our external
  (i.e. community) requirements.  These can then be merged.

* It is important for this tool and upcoming tools that the
  requirements come from both sides - secretariat and community.

* It is OK and appropriate that Mike - the secretariat developer
  - is on the tools-team mailing list

* I've talked with Gregory from the secretariat about setting
  up either a delegated "tools.ietf.org" or an area
  www.ietf.org/tools/ which we can access and control; with a
  preference for "tools.ietf.org".  I will contact Gregory
  again about this during next week when he's back among the
  servers.

* I'd like us to set up a central page which lists and provides
  access to all available tools in use within the community -
  things like xml2rfc, idnits, issue trackers, MIB compilers and
  extractors, ABNF checkers and whatnot.

    Best,
       Henrik

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