(I searched the mailing list archives, but could not find anything related to this topic, so here goes: )
Freetype is an essential library, generating what billions of eyes see worldwide everyday, this means that any improvement made here would have a huge impact all around the world. It also means that it is an attractive attack vector for hackers, so the code must be bug free. I believe that the current development setup is suboptimal for a library this important and would like to suggest some improvements.
#1: Migrate development over to github:
Host the git repo on GitHub, use the GitHub issues and PR tracker instead of GNU Savannah and e-mail
Benefits:
1. Makes contribution easier:
GitHub is the most popular code hosting platform used by millions of projects, and as a result, most open-source developers already know how to use it, reducing the need to learn new tooling as compared to GNU Savannah and email which are much less common.
2. Visibility:
It is much easier for a curious developer to navigate a GitHub repository than to clone the repo and scour mailing lists looking for patches and code reviews.
3. Easier for newbies :
GitHub has *excellent* documentation about almost everything related to git and GitHub, so new developers can get acquainted with version control easily and quickly. It should also help GSOC students focus on their task instead of navigating around obsolete UI.
4. Attracts younger developers:
Stuff like hacktoberfest, the GitHub student developer pack ensures student Dev's from around the world are on GitHub, effectively increasing potential contributors. Even if not code, it makes it easier for developers to just stop by and give suggestions in comments to PRs or issues.
5. Productivity features:
GitHub has many features that make contributing to as well as reviewing code easier. A beautiful interface, code review tools to suggest changes per line!, a powerful issue tracker with labels, duplicates, milestones etc., ability to create a wiki, managing releases, a mobile app so you can post suggestions on open issues while laying on your bed!! etc.
It even has a cli!!
Overall, it is much easier to open issues on GitHub, send patches via PRs and the tight integration means you can easily manage PRs that close specific issues, milestones etc.
#2: Join GitHub sponsors program:
Text rendering has a profound impact on the user experience and there would be many people willing to sponsor improvements to text rendering, particularly linux folks, so it would be great if there was a way to channel their support.
Benefits:
Increase incentive for developers to contribute to freetype, the money could be used to hire part time devs, support website infrastructure, etc.
#3: Use GitHub actions:
GitHub actions can be used to setup a ci for freetype and make issue/PR tracking easier with bots.
Benefits:
You can have all kinds of testing and fuzzing for all supported architectures *for free* , this would be very helpful in improving code quality and preventing regressions, and would ultimately lead to increase in robustness of the library. It would also be helpful in automating workflows, for example generating docs on a new release using GitHub actions with freetype-docwriter.
Overall, the proposed changes would decrease friction for new developers, increase the amount of contributions, incentivise development, and provide a pleasent user interface for code contribution, review and management.
There are many successful FOSS projects being developed on GitHub: opencv, harfbuzz, curl, rust, vscode and thousands more, so it would be great to join them.
These are my points (I am a newbie too😅), I hope this post starts a discussion and we are able to reach a conclusion.
Cheers,
Anurag