Should we open the discussions board on github?

Hipparchus development
1

Because much of the developers are already using the github issue and discussion forums, for me it’s the question, if we should enable the “discussion forum” on the hipparchus github projects settings?

See these links:

IMO,

  • it’s much easier for interested developers to start a discussion on github as to start here in the orekit forum.
  • it’s also much easier to convert a discussion into an open issue on github
  • …
2

Hi @axelclk

That’s an interesting question.

I’m not familiar with GitHub discussions.
Having the Hipparchus forum in the same place as the Orekit forum is interesting to benefit from the Orekit visibility.
At the opposite, we always talk about the “Orekit forum”, not the " Orekit/Hipparchus " forum. So, this visibility has the disadvantage of slightly masking the existence of Hippparchus. In fact, Hipparchus and Orekit are two different projects, even if one has a dependency to the other one. I think that the two are usually linked, like for the forum, because a lot of Hipparchus’ developers are also Orekit developers. But in fact, there are no reason to have both forums in the same place.

Best regards,
Bryan

3

In summary, I think they are no reason to have Hipparchus discussions in the Orekit forum because it is an independent project. But, as Orekit and Hipparchus share a lot of developers, it is easy for them to have both discussions in the same area

4

Hi all,

Personally I find GitHub globally less user friendly than Gitlab and Discourse. So I’m not really in favour of switching from the current situation.

Cheers,
Romain.

5

Could we have both?
It wouls attract more users on GitHub, and would allow Orekit afficionados to remain here.

1 Like
6

“To have both” is also my favorite.

The github markdown processor allows a lot of different things in issues and discussions which are good suited to discuss the further development.
For example:

GitHub supports LaTeX formatted math within Markdown

Creating a permanent link to a code snippet

Creating code blocks:

7

Discourse too: :slight_smile:

        // X-Axis Halo Orbit Amplitude
        final double ax      = FastMath.sqrt((delta + l2 * az * az) / -l1);
        final double nu      = 1.0 + s1 * ax * ax + s2 * az * az;
        final double tau     = nu * t;
        final double tau1    = wp * tau + phi;
        final double m       = (type == LibrationOrbitFamily.NORTHERN) ? 1 : 3;
        final double dm      = 2 - m;
        final SinCos scTau1  = FastMath.sinCos(tau1);
        final SinCos sc2Tau1 = SinCos.sum(scTau1, scTau1);
        final SinCos sc3Tau1 = SinCos.sum(scTau1, sc2Tau1);
8

Discourse too: :slight_smile:

\sqrt{(-1)} \; 2^3 \; \sum \; \pi

Thanks to the MathJax plugin, already deployed on our Discourse instance.

9

You didn’t use the funniest part of Orekit as example :sweat_smile:

10

That’s right, you can even link them on Discourse:

https://gist.github.com/bash/015bc272fe46b7b8850cc3ba05d4ef19

The integration could be enhanced thanks to the Github plugin.

11

Sorry, remember: I don’t know anything about Java, I don’t know anything about space dynamics, and my mathematical skills have been severely eroded over time. One wonders what I’m doing here! :smiley:

1 Like
12

I don’t want my remarks to be a source of inhibition and frustration. It therefore seems useful to clarify my previous comments. As I’m not involved in the project (I’m just the “ops” in charge of the platform and the guy who implemented the CI/CD pipeline of Hipparchus with Github Actions), my opinion doesn’t count. I just wanted to point out that the technical arguments were wrong and that Discourse offers all the features mentioned and many more.

The community must be free to adopt the tools it prefers, even if I personally have a soft spot for free (open source) and self-hosted tools, which offer better guarantees of independence and freedom. :wink:

Have a nice day!

13

Yes ok.

So how is the decision making process?
“Cast a vote” for the two cases?

  1. open discussions board on github hipparchus project, additionally to the orekit forum?
  2. only the orekit forum should be used for hipparchus discussions?
14

I guess we will open discussions on Github and see how people use this.

15

OK, I have enabled discussions on the Github repository.

16

thank you.