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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<guide self="hosted-projects/">
<chapter>
<title>Hosted projects</title>
<body>
<p>
The following guidelines have been proposed for hosted projects in an attempt to
prevent a repeat of the <c>genkernel</c> disaster.
</p>
</body>
<section>
<title>Documentation requirement</title>
<body>
<p>
All hosted projects should have decent, up to date user and developer
documentation. This documentation must be available <e>before the first release</e>,
and not left as "something we'll do later (honest)".
</p>
<p>
Our documentation team is happy to help out with GuideXMLification, translation
etc. for the user documentation, but they <e>need</e> various things to do this:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
Basic documentation to start with.
</li>
<li>
Basic information on the project or tool, such as:
<ul>
<li>
The goals
</li>
<li>
The design specification
</li>
<li>
An FAQ
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
To be informed of any updates, in advance if at all possible <d/> this is to
avoid having out of date recommendations in the documentation.
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Developer documentation is generally best left in the hands of the project
maintainers.
</p>
</body>
</section>
<section>
<title>Portability</title>
<body>
<p>
Gentoo runs on a large number of architectures. This is one of our big
advantages over some other distributions. It is therefore important that any
tools are made with portability in mind, <e>even if you originally think that your
tool is only relevant for one arch</e>. It was this kind of assumption that meant
that <c>genkernel</c> had to be completely rewritten when it suddenly became
mandatory.
</p>
<p>
In practice, this means the following:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
Using a portable programming language <d/> no Java or C# for any Gentoo tools.
Bash, C and Python are good, especially since everyone already has those
installed.
</li>
<li>
Not making assumptions about the hardware or architecture. This covers various
things, depending upon the tool <d/> simple examples include:
<ul>
<li>
Not assuming that you are running on a 32bit little endian system.
</li>
<li>
Not assuming that all computers have a VGA text console, or indeed any
kind of graphics capability.
</li>
<li>
Not assuming that all computers use DOS disclabels.
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
Not relying too strongly upon particular implementations of various tools,
except where it has been agreed that we will always use a particular
implementation of said tool (it is safe to use <c>GNU sed</c> extensions, for
example, but <e>not</e> <c>GNU find</c> extensions).
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</section>
<section>
<title>Open / free</title>
<body>
<p>
All hosted projects should use an appropriate open / free / libre license.
Typically this will be the GPL v2 for software, and some version of the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC-BY-SA-*) for documentation.
However, reasonable exceptions can be made <d/> sometimes it
makes more sense to use the LGPL or a *BSD license, and for application-specific
projects going with the application's license may make more sense (the
<c>gentoo-syntax</c> package for <c>vim</c> uses the <c>vim</c> license, for example).
</p>
</body>
</section>
<section>
<title>Accessible</title>
<body>
<p>
Projects should be accessible to users with disabilities. Simple examples of how
to go about this include:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
Not relying solely upon colour to convey information.
</li>
<li>
Providing textual descriptions for any images.
</li>
<li>
Providing clear captions for dialogs, buttons, form fields and so on.
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Good places to look for further hints include:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<uri link="https://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel-guide/stable/gad.html.en">GNOME Accessibility
Project</uri>
</li>
<li>
<uri link="https://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources/#guides">W3C Web Accessibility
Initiative Guidelines</uri>
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</section>
</chapter>
</guide>
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