Open Source Project Infrastructure?

cpfeifer asks: "Russ Miles wrote about going through the pain of setting up his own infrastructure for his OSS project, AspectXML. He asks: 'Are there tools out there that make this process much easier, and perhaps ones that I could take advantage of by moving my own open source project to? Also what experiences have people had with the different community projects?' Should you start up your own gforge server, host it on Sourceforge, or perhaps look to one of the OSS groups like Apache, Codehaus or Tigris?"

Comments

Don't Use SF

[Kick the Donkey]

I would recommend against using SF. The site is slow, and you'll spend more time learing the ins and outs of the administrative interface. I've never used GForge, but it looks to be more of the same.

Mabye use a groupware client (like phpgroupware).

Or better yet, use Mantis. Its a great web-based bug tracker. But we use it at work to track all kinds of things. All you're really looking for is something to manage bugs, enhancements, etc. Install it, CVS, and ViewCVS, and you should have almost everything you need.

Try the NetWinSite servers (DNews, DBabble, etc)

[joelparker]

From my experience running this kind of thing,
I highly recommend discussions via newsgroups.
They are easier to use than most web boards,
which leads to better/easier user feedback.

The newsgroups are easy to set up,
for examples see www.netwinsite.com.

The servers provide full text search,
straightforward email-to-news gateways,
various authentications, chat, etc.

Once you have your newsgroups working,
ask your participants what they use
for bug databases, source systems, etc.
Use the tools they know and recommend,
and you'll likely get better participation.