Badges, Gitter and More

[Toxantron]

Today it has become common practice among open source projects to add badges to the README with quick links to nuget, the build server and a discussion channel. Regarding discussions I noticed a reference to a mailing list. May I suggest using Gitter instead? You can easily reserve www.gitter.im/castleproject and then add rooms for Home, Core, Windsor.

Thoughts?

[Toxantron]

Especially the integration of Github into Gitter allows for a smooth collaboration and communication.

An example for a well used Gitter channel is ImageSharp.

@Toxantron - we have just completed the migration of the build process to appveyor and travis ci so we can definitely have some build badges indicating our build status. I personally also like showing the NuGet version on the README.md, so definitely agree with you. Are there any other badges you could recommend? I tried PR badges in a separate project I forked from Windsor but they keep breaking and look ugly.

Gitter is something new I have not tried yet.

There is heaps to do here. The Castle website also needs a bit of an update.

[Toxantron]

Code coverage is another nice badge. I went through the whole process with CGbR and might be able to help there.

Gitter Setup is really easy with a GitHub account. Not more than 10minutes. It's a markdown based chat with repo Integration. You can directly link to commits and issues.

Cool project, I have been meaning to get round to checking this out. Tonight I am checking out nunit adapter on linux. Would you be prepared to submit some PR's to Castle Core/Windsor to help get this going?

[Toxantron]

Thanks, for a lack of time (other OSS projects, work, buying a house for me and my pregnant wife while writing a master thesis) it is currently on ice, but I plan to extend this.

I can most certainly help with the badges and some advice. Unfortunately webhooks, gitter etc. require write access to the repo. But if you start with Gitter, which is insanely easy, we can talk there.

Totally get what you mean. @jonorossi will have to make the final decision on gitter. I am interested in coveralls. Let's wait till Australia comes online and check back when he replies.

[Toxantron]

Speaking of Australia, what happend to @kkozmic? Didn't he start the project and used to be maintainer?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Project

[Toxantron]

Thanks, this still leaves a few questions, but I wont drive this OT. ;-)

[jonorossi]

Today it has become common practice among open source projects to add badges to the README with quick links to nuget, the build server and a discussion channel

Happy for info about the NuGet packages to be added to the readme, I do like the package version number badge, however I don't really see the value in linking to a build server when it is integrated into GitHub everywhere via the branches page, commits list, and every pull request.

Regarding discussions I noticed a reference to a mailing list. May I suggest using Gitter instead? You can easily reserve www.gitter.im/castleproject and then add rooms for Home, Core, Windsor.

If you visit the gitter.im link you provided you'll see we've already got a room, we've had it for years right from early on when gitter came out, however it really has had little use in the last couple of years.

I've got no problem with people using or promoting it, however there really isn't anyone in there and I don't want to see it used as a support forum. You'll see the room description tells people to go to StackOverflow for user questions because SO is structured and allows the answers to live on so they don't need to be asked over and over providing better value to everyone. For me I find the async nature of GitHub Issues works better for me with different timezones and to ensure Castle doesn't encroach on my work/life, which is why I'm not in there, however looking at the room it does say I'm in the room but I don't seem to get notifications.

Code coverage is another nice badge

Castle used to have coverage reports using NCover 1.x going back a really long time ago, I can see value in getting something like this set up again.

[Toxantron]

Happy for info about the NuGet packages to be added to the readme, I do like the package version number badge, however I don't really see the value in linking to a build server when it is integrated into GitHub everywhere via the branches page, commits list, and every pull request.

I think the value of build badges is:

1. Users can directly see that the project has a CI build, which is considered an indicator of quality
2. If the project builds on AppVeyor and Travis they can easily see that is truly cross platform

If you visit the gitter.im link you provided you'll see we've already got a room, we've had it for years right from early on when gitter came out, however it really has had little use in the last couple of years.

I'll be damned. Who could imagine the link I made up actually exists. All the more reason to link to the channel from the README. I do get your argument about work/life and the questions part requires a moderator at times to make sure it is used by developers to talk about implementation and not to ask questions.

Castle used to have coverage reports using NCover 1.x going back a really long time ago, I can see value in getting something like this set up again.

Open Cover and CoverAlls integrates nicely with AppVeyor and offers Badges and PR webhooks.

[jonorossi]

I can see the merit in that justification, I'm happy to accept a pull request to add build badges.

Whoever adds any badge be mindful of the fact that people fork our repos and therefore our readme becomes their readme, these links are obviously only relevant to our castleproject org set up, so something not too over the top would be best.

[Toxantron]

@jonorossi I am happy to add those.

I think the problem for forks is only with real forks(not the Github PR ones) and they can change the target link if they want to. It would however mean they can't create a PR against master without cherry-picking or separate branches and slightly more difficult merging.