Trying to manage a robotics club.

Posted by on January 27, 2009, 12:49 pm

As of now, the North Carolina State University Underwater Robotics
Club (URC) has no sort of code or project management. There have been
attempts in the past to use an SVN and wiki's but both attempts
ultimately failed. I feel like the club needs a place where dates and
times are readily available for events going on and where code can be
accessed and placed when we are working on things separately. We
currently are using a mailing list.. which is working surprisingly
well but falls short on being able to host code or work as a calendar
of any sort. I was curious as to if anyone had any suggestions on
routes I might take on setting up a usable web based system. Any
thoughts or help would be greatly appriciated.

Thank you, Matthias Welsh.

Posted by Joe Pfeiffer on January 27, 2009, 1:21 pm

thecodebenders@gmail.com writes:

> As of now, the North Carolina State University Underwater Robotics
> Club (URC) has no sort of code or project management. There have been
> attempts in the past to use an SVN and wiki's but both attempts
> ultimately failed. I feel like the club needs a place where dates and
> times are readily available for events going on and where code can be
> accessed and placed when we are working on things separately. We
> currently are using a mailing list.. which is working surprisingly
> well but falls short on being able to host code or work as a calendar
> of any sort. I was curious as to if anyone had any suggestions on
> routes I might take on setting up a usable web based system. Any
> thoughts or help would be greatly appriciated.

First question is why did the efforts fail?

Most of the time, the main thing that's needed to get code repositories
(etc) to work is for somebody to take the bull by the horns and do the
management. Set up the repository, and when somebody makes a change
bug them about checking the code in. When there's a presentation, bug
the presenter about putting the slides up on the wiki. And so on.

Incidentally, I've recently started using google calendar (since I
just got a new G1 phone), and it looks like it would be really, really
good organizational calendars.

Posted by Gordon McComb on January 27, 2009, 1:28 pm

> Most of the time, the main thing that's needed to get code repositories
> (etc) to work is for somebody to take the bull by the horns and do the
> management.

For this I'd use something like sourceforge.net, which is free and has
the code repository, check-in, etc. all set up. It self-manages pretty
much. It's designed for open source projects (don't remember the
requirements here), so if the group's code is proprietary they may not
be able to host it there. But most groups are happy making their joint
code open to all.

-- Gordon

Posted by on January 27, 2009, 1:34 pm

> thecodebend...@gmail.com writes:

> > As of now, the North Carolina State University Underwater Robotics
> > Club (URC) has no sort of code or project management. =A0There have been
> > attempts in the past to use an SVN and wiki's but both attempts
> > ultimately failed. =A0I feel like the club needs a place where dates and
> > times are readily available for events going on and where code can be
> > accessed and placed when we are working on things separately. =A0We
> > currently are using a mailing list.. which is working surprisingly
> > well but falls short on being able to host code or work as a calendar
> > of any sort. =A0I was curious as to if anyone had any suggestions on
> > routes I might take on setting up a usable web based system. =A0Any
> > thoughts or help would be greatly appriciated.

> First question is why did the efforts fail?
> Most of the time, the main thing that's needed to get code repositories
> (etc) to work is for somebody to take the bull by the horns and do the
> management. =A0Set up the repository, and when somebody makes a change
> bug them about checking the code in. =A0When there's a presentation, bug
> the presenter about putting the slides up on the wiki. =A0And so on.
> Incidentally, I've recently started using google calendar (since I
> just got a new G1 phone), and it looks like it would be really, really
> good organizational calendars.

Mostly I suppose they fell apart simply because not enough of the club
was actively and consistently using them. Also the SVN was never
properly setup or managed, the basic understanding of the club is it
was too complicated.. I looked into project server and project .net
but neither of those offer the code repository that we're in need of.
I suppose I might be looking for an "easy" solution where there isn't
really one. I like google code/calendar/groups but the problem lies
in basically opening up all of our efforts and code. While I'm an
open-source advocate myself there are other members who are not.
Automation from the calendar to email would be nice come to think of
it... so that might be something to look in to. I would like to keep
it as single solution as possible if we can, trying to not run two
totally different services like an SVN and a wiki, but they do seem to
be fairly compatible so again I may be making more out of the issue
than there is to it. Thanks for your thoughts!

Posted by The Artist Formerly Known as K on January 28, 2009, 9:52 am

thecodebenders@gmail.com wrote:

>> thecodebend...@gmail.com writes:

[snip]

>
> Mostly I suppose they fell apart simply because not enough of the club
> was actively and consistently using them. Also the SVN was never
> properly setup or managed, the basic understanding of the club is it
> was too complicated.. I looked into project server and project .net
> but neither of those offer the code repository that we're in need of.
> I suppose I might be looking for an "easy" solution where there isn't
> really one. I like google code/calendar/groups but the problem lies
> in basically opening up all of our efforts and code. While I'm an
> open-source advocate myself there are other members who are not.
> Automation from the calendar to email would be nice come to think of
> it... so that might be something to look in to. I would like to keep
> it as single solution as possible if we can, trying to not run two
> totally different services like an SVN and a wiki, but they do seem to
> be fairly compatible so again I may be making more out of the issue
> than there is to it. Thanks for your thoughts!

svn management isn't really terribly hard, and you can use products like
tortoise (free, open source) to eliminate the need to use the svn
command line.

--
(Replies: cleanse my address of the Mark of the Beast!)

Teleoperate a roving mobile robot from the web:
http://www.swampgas.com/robotics/rover.html

Coauthor with Dennis Clark of "Building Robot Drive Trains".
Buy several copies today!

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