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Not impressed with changes to shell service on sourceforge...

Posted by Michael on 19 Sep 2008 at 17:08

So, sourceforge are changing their services. Can't really complain since it is free, but it really is pain. They've switched off shell access, and broken the web servers (our home page there now shows this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/groups/k/ka/kamaelia/cgi-bin/Wiki/wiki", line 24, in ?
    import pprint
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/pprint.py", line 39, in ?
    from cStringIO import StringIO as _StringIO
ImportError: /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/cStringIO.so: failed to map segment from shared object: Cannot allocate memory
And there's no way (that I can see) to change the website to point at the main website now. We were building/readying a replacement server, but hadn't quite got there, so weren't putting redirects in place yet. Ho hum. I've updated the link on http://sourceforge.net/projects/kamaelia to point at the new server, but given we've moved SVN elsewhere, mailing lists elsewhere and the webserver elsewhere I think this final breakage by SF marks the end of the road for use with sourceforge.

I don't mind the idea that they're changing the maintenance of the website from shell to web - it's their site, their call. But disabling shell, breaking the webserver, BEFORE putting in place the alternative is a real pain. It's kinda sad to leave sourceforge, but breaking subversion, spammed to death mailing lists and now breaking the website is the final straw really. You never know though, I'm sure the aim behind these changes is to improve things, so we may come back at some point if they fix things.


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Comments

thank you #

 I appreciate the fact that though you are annoyed, you didn't create a four page rant as to why sourceforge sucks and you have been raped and pillaged by their arrogant disregard for your concerns and feelings.  Instead, you very simply stated, "Their site, their rules but they are shortsighted and I'm moving on."  So much of the IT world acts as entitled to their every narcissistic whim.  I'm so tired of myopic 20somethings whining.

-- guest, 20 Sep 2008 at 02:24, Rating: 0 (Reply) (Moderated by: anon)

#

You're welcome. Actually that's something that is missing from the original post, so I'll probably make a new top level post about that. For all the irritation it causes Sourceforge is a wonderful resource and very good at what it does. Sure some recent changes have caused us pain and irritation, to the extent that we're shifting servers and hosting, but it's free - and it's been great. I'd still recommend their service to someone starting out, and I suspect that the rsync based approach for updating project web areas will be a great boon to lots of projects.

It has meant for example that we now have a good redirect running on sourceforge to where the site is now currently running, and at the end of the day, that's a lot more than you'd normally get with a commercial service for the princely sum of $0.

I'll write it that up shortly I think :)

-- Michael, 21 Sep 2008 at 20:31, Rating: 0 (Reply) (Moderated by: anon)

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