Re: [gentoo-soc] Package statistics reporting tool

[Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org>]

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On 18:54 Tue 29 Mar     , Vikraman wrote:
> I've been doing research on this project for sometime, and would
> really like my ideas to be reviewed by the community before
> submitting my application.
> 
> * User runs a script as a cronjob (or a portage hook ?), which
> collects stats on installed packages, and uploads to the online
> database. Surprisingly easy to code using the gentoolkit API.

Sure, one of those two options sounds good. The choice can be easily 
changed later, but I prefer the idea of a hook that runs after the 
package manager completes installing a package set.

People on laptops may not run cron jobs regularly, or at all.

> * Webapp generates statistics on the packages (top packages,
> versions, popularity, packages from overlays). Thanks to ideas from
> an old thread on the forums. Devs, please suggest some more useful
> ideas/stats too.

For Gentoo users:
- Search by package name
- Search by packages often installed with this one (recommendations)
- Add ratings. Maybe just via the GUI frontend for now.
- Add user reputations and profiles. How many ratings, etc. Provide the 
  option of logging in as user or anonymously for package uploads.


Tools for Gentoo developers:
- Least popular packages
- Search by maintainer/herd
- Integrate with Bugzilla by showing # of bugs & linking to the list
- Integrate w/ BZ by showing # of tinderbox-related bugs

For example, a useful search would be ≤20 users, package assigned to 
maintainer-needed or maintainer wanted, and ≥1 open bugs.

> * Dev/user runs a cli script to read stats or a gui program to
> display graphs.
>
> I'm looking forward to coding the project in Python, gui using
> PyGTK, database using MySQL. For the web service implementation,
> should I use SOAP (soappy, which I'll need to learn) or something
> like web.py (I've used it earlier) ?

What is the role of the GUI? Please describe the use cases and justify 
why it should be a desktop app rather than a webapp.

Consider REST for the web service rather than SOAP. There's a nice book 
called "RESTful Web Services" you might like to take a look at.

> It was also suggested earlier to allow a dev to trigger a popup
> feedback from the user. I think that would require the user ro run a
> daemon, which will listen for queries.

It doesn't necessarily have to be instant. Upon the next installation, 
when uploading new stats, the client could check for messages.

> Please suggest what details to include and what not to include in
> the application.

Many resources exist on this topic:

- http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/userrel/soc/applying.xml
- http://www.booki.cc/gsocstudentguide/_v/1.0/writing-a-proposal/
- http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/03/dos-and-donts-of-google-summer-of-code.html

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Admin, Summer of Code
Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.com

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