# The RAA needs a makeover **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [September 20, 2006, 9:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/the-raa-needs-a-makeover/69408 "2006-09-20T21:41:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2006, 9:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/the-raa-needs-a-makeover/69408/1 "2006-09-20T21:41:49Z")
All, If [www.ruby-lang.org](http://www.ruby-lang.org) can have a makeover, why not [raa.ruby-lang.org](http://raa.ruby-lang.org)? The UI is a bit clunky, and there is no web service backend. That means net-http + screen scraping in order to interface with it. Ick. Warning: stream of consciousness follows… Of course, what I _really_ want is tighter integration with RubyForge. The RAA is good for finding libraries, but bad for finding projects in the large. RubyForge is good for hosting projects (and bug tracking, etc), but its search capabilities kinda suck. Ok, maybe all I really want is a page that shows new packages and/or updates to existing packages as a link off of RubyForge itself ([http://www.rubyforge.org/recent](http://www.rubyforge.org/recent), hypothetically), in the same way that CPAN has the “recent updates” page at [Recent - metacpan.org](http://search.cpan.org/recent). This, plus a way to link the package to a standalone description and/or its parent project home page. Hm…but then there’s the hosting issue. What if people don’t want to host on RubyForge? What then? Tough luck? Maybe the ‘recent’ page on RubyForge would still be good idea, but it would be limited to RubyForge projects only. That still leaves us with the necessity of a separate RAA, though. Back to my original idea then - rewrite the RAA using Rails, add web services, minor fixes, tweaks for the UI and some minor database changes (e.g. allow project names longer than 15 characters). Then there’s the deployment issue. It’s annoying having to update RubyForge and the RAA separately. Gregory B. and I wrote a package called www-raa with the notion of giving it to Tom C. so that updates to packages on the RAA would automatically update the corresponding RAA entry (assuming it exists). As Gregory mentioned, maybe this would be mitigated by giving it to Ryan Davis, and having it integrated with Hoe as part of a “rake deploy” task. Perhaps “rake deploy:raa” or “rake deploy:all” or something. I think others have written libraries/packages that do this but I can’t remember what they are at the moment. Anyway, thoughts on this issue welcome. Regards, Dan This communication is the property of Qwest and may contain confidential or privileged information. Unauthorized use of this communication is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the communication and any attachments. ---
**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2006, 5:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/the-raa-needs-a-makeover/69408/2 "2006-09-21T17:08:19Z")
On 9/20/06, Berger, Daniel [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > All, > > If [www.ruby-lang.org](http://www.ruby-lang.org) can have a makeover, why not [raa.ruby-lang.org](http://raa.ruby-lang.org)? > [snip] > > Of course, what I _really_ want is tighter integration with RubyForge. > [snip] When I first started using Ruby (fairly recently), I quickly got the impression that the RAA wasn’t really used much anymore, and that everyone uses RubyForge instead. The front page of the RAA site doesn’t have any “About this site” link, no site docs, no mention of who the guilty parties are, and the last news item says that something “is under indefinite suspension” and is from over a year ago. Also the dates on the projects listed on the front page don’t include the year. —John