SourceForge Notes

This is a summary of SourceForge (SF) features and how they are administered. These are my (Brent's) notes and may not be 100% accurate. Pleaes let me know where I'm wrong about something.

• Administrators: The person that creates a project is the default administrator for that project. They add group members and can grant administrator rights to other members, as well as admin rights over particular SF features as described below.
• Project Members: Every project member has CVS write access. By creating a commitinfo script in the appropriate place, you can further subdivide access rights. Every project member is part of a UNIX group used for access control to the various file systems owned by the project. In particular, this includes /home/groups/groupname/htdocs that is the web site visible as http://groupname.sourceforge.net/ and /home/groups/ftp/pub/groupname that is the FTP site visible as ftp://groupname.sourceforge.net/pub/groupname
• Public Information: The admin can set the name, public description, and a search engine (Trove) categorization.
• Administration delegation: Additionally, the admin can enable the following features, and each feature has feature has an "admin" and "tech" role, so someone can be the "admin" of the bug database without being the admin of the whole project.
• Bug Tracker - the bug database. It has two roles "Tech", which I believe means you can be assigned bugs and then futz with those bug records, and "Admin", which means you can futz with any record as well as define the two programmable fields in the database. There are also batch SQL updates to the bug database that the bug admin can do. The bug database has a relatively simple schema:

  Bug ID:
  Synopsis:
  Comments:
  Status: Open Closed
  Resolution: Fixed, Invalid, Wont Fix, Later, Remind, Works for Me, Duplicate
  Priority: 1 to 10
  Assigned To: 
  Category: programmable, e.g., identifies some area of the software
  Group: programmable, e.g., Bug or RFE, or perhaps Version,
  Date:
  Submitted By:
  

• Support - a database of support requests. This is like the bug database, but for support requests. It appears to function just like the Bug DB, so the bit about Admin and Tech roles apply.
• Patches - another variation on the bug database to collect patches. It has a programmable "Patch Category" that the patch administrator can set. Patches can be assigned to project members that have the "Tech" role in the patch feature. Patches have an

  Assigned To:
  Status: Open, Closed, Deleted, Postponed, Rejected, Accepted, Out-of-date
  Category: (programmable by patch admin)
  

• Mailing Lists I believe a project can have any number of mailing lists, within reason. These lists are open to anyone, not just project members. I think there is a separate list administrator, but I'm not sure because I'm not using this feature. At any rate, either the project admin or the list admin requests new lists and maintains them.
• Tasks - these are subprojects. You can create these and decide if they are visible to non-project members. The Task admin can create these, and presumably the assigned "Tech" folks can update the task records. I don't know much more. I think this may be the same as the "Jobs" that are referenced from the project pages.
• Docs web-based documentation - add new docs, view the docs. Anyone, not even a project member, can submit a doc. The "Editor" reviews the doc and decides if it should become public. It isn't clear to me how useful this is in comparison to the project web site.
• Surveys - Create surveys! I don't see roles split out for this, so probably only the project admin can create surveys.
• News - post news bullitens. Any project member can post a message, but the project admin has to approve it.
• Files - These are releases. The project admin can create releases that appear on the "Files" section of the SF project. I believe there is a distinction between these release files and the general FTP area owned by a project. Any project member can write the the FTP area, but only the admins can create releases.
• Screenshots The admin can upload screenshots of the application.
• Diarys Members can keep a diary, public or private.