13.7.1. Å arbeide i grupper: groupware
Groupware tools tend to be relatively complex to maintain because they aggregate multiple tools and have requirements that are not always easy to reconcile in the context of an integrated distribution. Thus there is a long list of groupware packages that were once available in Debian but have been dropped for lack of maintainers or incompatibility with other (newer) software in Debian. This has been the case with PHPGroupware, eGroupware, and Kolab.
All is not lost though. Many of the features traditionally provided by “groupware” software are increasingly integrated into “standard” software. This is reducing the requirement for specific, specialized groupware software. On the other hand, this usually requires a specific server. Citadel (in the citadel-suite package), Sogo (in the sogo package) and Kopano (in the kopano-core package) are alternatives that are available in Debian Buster.
13.7.2. Samarbeid med FusionForge
FusionForge er et utviklingsverktøy for samarbeid, delvis fra SourceForge, en vertstjeneste for fri programvareprosjekter. Det har den samme generelle tilnærmingen basert på den standard utviklingsmodellen for fri programvare. Selve programvaren har fortsatt å utvikle seg etter at SourceForge-koden ble proprietær. Dens første forfattere, VA Software, besluttet å ikke gi ut flere gratis versjoner. Det samme skjedde på nytt da den første gaffelen (GForge) fulgte den samme banen. Siden ulike personer og organisasjoner har deltatt i utviklingen, inneholder dagens FusionForge også funksjoner rettet mot en mer tradisjonell tilnærming til utvikling, samt prosjekter som ikke bare er opptatt av programvareutvikling .
FusionForge kan sees som en samling av flere verktøy øremeket til å administrere, spore og koordinere prosjekter. Disse verktøyene kan grovt deles inn i tre familier:
communication: web forums, mailing-list manager, and announcement system allowing a project to publish news
tracking: tools to track project progress and schedule tasks, to track bugs, feature requests, or any other kind of “ticket”, and to run surveys
deling: dokumentasjonshåndterer for å gi ett enkelt sentralt punkt for dokumenter knyttet til et prosjekt, generisk filutgivelseshåndterer, eget nettsted for hvert prosjekt.
Since FusionForge largely targets development projects, it also integrates many tools such as CVS, Subversion, Git, Bazaar, Darcs, Mercurial and Arch for source control management (also called “configuration management” or “version control”). These programs keep a history of all the revisions of all tracked files (often source code files), with all the changes they go through, and they can merge modifications when several developers work simultaneously on the same part of a project.
Most of these tools can be accessed or even managed through a web interface, with a fine-grained permission system, and email notifications for some events.
FusionForge is not part of Debian Stable. It is a large software stack that is hard to maintain properly and benefits only few users who are usually expert enough to be able to backport the package from Debian Unstable.
