Re: [thredds] The future of THREDDS and netCDF

Thanks for the very thoughtful and thought provoking farewell note.

Godspeed, John Caron.

-- Ben

On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 1:06 PM, John Caron <caron@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Today on my last day at Unidata, I want to add a few thoughts about the
> future of THREDDS and netCDF.
>
> Software lives and dies by the ability of its users to get questions
> answered and bugs fixed and possibly features added. While support from
> Unidata is solid, it is by no means guaranteed. Its crucial that we
> continue to foster and develop a community of contributors to THREDDS and
> netCDF from outside Unidata. Since I am now becoming one, these issues
> are front and center for me.
>
> 1) For software revision control and making contributions easy, I think we
> are in good shape. Workflows using git have made a huge difference
> everywhere in Open Source Software (OSS) in the last several years. Unidata
> now has all of its important software source code publicly available on
> github. Of course theres always much more that could be done to document
> code and design decisions.
>
> 2) For question asking / answering I think we need to move away from
> private conversations using esupport, and use public forums where all can
> read and contribute to the conversation. Here are my recommendations:
>
>    - Use the mailing lists (thredds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
>    netcdf-java@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) for (almost) all questions about using
>    the software. These conversations are public so that everyone may benefit
>    from seeing what questions are being asked and answered, and also to share
>    their own experiences or to provide answers.
>    -
>    - Use the private esupport ticket system (
>    support-thredds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, support-netcdf-java@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
>    only for sensitive matters that need to be private (even then, if you dont
>    want the question publically archived, you have to say that in the ticket).
>    Note that others (for example me), wont read or comment on your
>    conversation.
>    -
>    - Use GitHub issues (https://github.com/Unidata/thredds/issues) if you
>    are using the source code in some way, eg sending pull requests, or for
>    questions/comments about the source code.
>    -
>    - Its also possible to use stack exchange (eg
>    http://stackexchange.com/search?q=thredds), but we dont yet have a
>    clear workflow around that. Id like to see a specific stack exchange forum
>    become the place for all scientic data formats / access protocols (HDF,
>    netCDF, opendap, OGC, CF, etc). We need a critical mass for this to work.
>    It would be good if stack exchange or some spin-off would specialize in
>    software support.
>
>
> 3) Issue tracking in JIRA is ok for now (
> https://bugtracking.unidata.ucar.edu/browse/TDS), though maybe github
> could be used. We need a system for allowing non-Unidata users to add
> issues and comment on existing issues.
>
> 4) Static analysis with Coverity (
> https://scan.coverity.com/projects/388?tab=overview) is very useful for
> code quality checking, and is free for OSS.
>
> 5) Unit testing and Continuous Integration (CI) are not completely solved
> problems. We use Jenkins and Travis, but these are not public (Jenkins) or
> complete (Travis). The THREDDS group is continuing to investigate long
> term, public, scaleable solutions for this.
>
> In summary, software development tools and infrastructure have become much
> more mature and rich in the last 10 years. OSS has coalesced around certain
> technologies like git and stack exchange.  Im looking forward to the
> continued evolution of this ecosystem in the next 10 years.  We as a
> community want to track best practices and evolve along with it.
>
> John
>
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