Move to central organisation? about bootstrap_form

[carloslopes]

You have my 👍

But @potenza's opinion count more than mine in this case.

We only need to group the maintainers of all these gems and talk about how we would organize everything.

[potenza]

This sounds like a cool idea. Have you contacted the maintainers of any other gems?

[manuelmeurer]

Yep, sure did! 😄

stouset/twitter_bootstrap_form_for#87
mjbellantoni/formtastic-bootstrap#89
heartcombo/simple_form-bootstrap#32
Nerian/bootstrap-datepicker-rails#65
https://github.com/sethvargo/bootstrap_forms/issues/107
Nerian/bootstrap-wysihtml5-rails#79
xdite/bootstrap-helper#41
yrgoldteeth/bootstrap-will_paginate#18
bootstrap-ruby/will_paginate-bootstrap#24
bootstrap-ruby/sinatra-bootstrap#6

From the few answers I got, most are quite positive.
@sethvargo had the valid concern that two very similar gems in such a central organisation could be confusing for the users since the organisation would be a curated collection of tools.

What is your impression when you compare your bootstrap_form gem with https://github.com/sethvargo/bootstrap_forms? Are there any major differences or different approaches?
If not, would it make sense that you combine your efforts, maybe in a new gem in the new organisation?

[sethvargo]

I'm certainly down to merge efforts. It seems like bootstrap_form and bootstrap_forms are similar in structure and organization.

[potenza]

I like the idea and I agree with @sethvargo that both projects are very similar. I think it would be useful to the community (and less confusing) to have a combined effort rather than multiple projects that are nearly identical in features.

I'd like to know more about how we would actually proceed with a merge. Would we promote one of the projects to the organization and then work on adding features from the other project or start fresh and cherry pick ideas from both?

Also, I'd like to know more about the overall goals for "bootstrap-ruby". What are your thoughts on Bootstrap 2.x now that it's no longer officially supported? Last week we just released a new gem to support Bootstrap 3 and I made the decision to drop 2.x support to keep our codebase as simple as possible.

[carloslopes]

About the merge process, my idea is that we follow these steps (these steps can change with the time):

1. List all features/pros/cons from similar gems;
2. Group all maintainers to talk about the list and to elect one of them to be continued;
3. Fork the elected one to a repo in the new organization, giving a commit bit to the current maintainers of all involved gems;
4. Update the README of these gems telling about this new organization and pointing to the new repo;
5. See what is missing on the elected one and put the missing features (that are present on the others) in the roadmap;

[sethvargo]

@potenza @carloslopes so I'll be honest, I don't have a ton of time to participate in the discussions around the decision-making process. I'm also on holiday for the next few weeks, so I won't be of much benefit. @wingrunr21 may have some insight though.

[manuelmeurer]

@carloslopes Sounds great, this is what I would have recommended as well.

So I guess the discussion about which gem should be the foundation for a merged effort has to happen between you guys. I'm happy to jump in with my 2 cents if you want.

I can also already create a repo on the new organisation (it's alive! https://github.com/bootstrap-ruby) and you could discuss in a ticket over there, on neutral ground so to say. 😄

@potenza You asked about the overall goals for bootstrap-ruby. I have to say I haven't spent a ton of time thinking about it before I asked you guys (and the other maintainers), I basically wanted to see what the reactions were.
Most of the maintainers reacted positively and we are in the process of moving a couple of repos already.
I guess the overall goal should be to be the first destination for people looking for a gem to use any of the Bootstrap components in Rails, Sinatra or any other Ruby project. So it would be a kind of curated list of gems/projects, all of them should be well-maintained and there shouldn't be any two or more projects doing the same stuff. Can you think of more "requirements"?

Of course a curated list needs one or more curators, which I would do initially but over time it would probably make sense to add more people.

For you as a project maintainer not much would change, as you would stay an admin on the new project of course. The added visibility through the shared organisation should increase the trust in your projects though, and hopefully people like to contribute more compared to a project in somebody's personal Github account.

Thoughts? 😸

[wingrunr21]

I would be available to help with the merge effort. I'm about halfway through upgrading bootstrap_forms to support 3.x but can switch gears pretty easily.

[potenza]

Sorry for the delay, it's been a hectic week at work. I also think @carloslopes laid out a good plan for figuring out how to proceed. And yes, let's move the discussion to a new ticket to start discussing these points.

[manuelmeurer]

I created the repo and a issue for the merge: #1