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The Research Software Encyclopedia. I've been meaning to think about this and then I lost the link, so here it is.

#rse #rseng

https://rseng.github.io/software/
in reply to Ben Fulton

wow that’s more than three years old! I was trying to build some open source contributing spirit and projects around USRSE, but the executive committee wasn’t haven’t it. It was explicitly a professional organization and not for projects. That was the impetus for the creation of #rseng! This was one of the projects.
in reply to vsoch

@vsoch Yeah, something worth looking at again I think. There seem to be a lot of students asking about interesting projects to work on and not getting any good guidance.
in reply to Ben Fulton

@vsoch
How about moving it to a new home in https://hpc.social?
in reply to Alan Sill

@AlanSill that’s a great idea! Should we think of various cool automation avenues to follow to populate it? I can start to think about some updated branding for it!
in reply to vsoch

@vsoch A GitHub Discussion thread might do it, but for more visibility we could use other avenues, e.g., postings and/or a survey for feature requests. GitHub Discussions could be enough, if itʻs clear what sort of input is needed. I donʻt think any changes are needed to get started, though.
in reply to Alan Sill

@AlanSill @vsoch An updated repository list seems like the important thing. But I'm not sure if maintainers are really following through with the good-first-issue tag.
in reply to Ben Fulton

@vsoch Hmm, good observation that needs consideration.

Beyond this, just finding the applicatiosn doesnʻt necessarily mean that they are easy to build and install. Perhaps the listings could include links to package building and management tools where they exist to build and install the code? (Official/upstream, as well as tools like Spack, EasyBuild, and Conda.)
in reply to Alan Sill

@AlanSill the "Good first issues" label is already built into GitHub, and it's fairly trivial (in terms of work) to add the label. I think what we need to do is solicit project communities that want this kind of "new user contribution" and they will be aware of needing to apply the label.
in reply to vsoch

@vsoch I was referring more to moving the https://rseng.github.io/software/ repository itself, not just the first-issues topic. I agree that thatʻs already built in to GitHub but we could automate harvesting it periodically from repositories if this is not already done.
in reply to Alan Sill

@AlanSill the rseng software repository is the Research Software Encyclopedia - that's a different thing all-together than good first issues! That is an automated database of research software. https://openresearchsoftware.metajnl.com/articles/10.5334/jors.359
in reply to Alan Sill

@AlanSill and we are in business! The rseng repository is actually a GitHub action, and I forgot how easy I made it to use. I added a handful of hpc.social repos to a repos.txt, created the initial UI, and tweaked the style a bit. 👉 https://hpc.social/good-first-issues/ and on GitHub https://github.com/hpc-social/good-first-issues.

Should we do some pinging of projects with a ton of issues that could use help? Did you have projects in mind? 🤔
in reply to vsoch

@vsoch @AlanSill CBioPortal has a bunch of issues, Buffalo's ColdFront has one. Somebody mentioned https://github.com/MunGell/awesome-for-beginners on US-RSE as well, although that's generic and I was interested in research software particularly. I would love to add mine but I don't have any good first issues 😞 Where do maintainers hang out?
in reply to Ben Fulton

@vsoch @AlanSill I wonder if it's important to get the repository owner's permission. Otherwise, we could scrape the Encyclopedia and add projects that way.
in reply to Ben Fulton

@AlanSill there are way too many projects in the RSEPedia to do that! I also think we generally want to target projects that are explicitly wanting the help. A lot of what is published in some of these databases, for example, are one off code repos associated with an analysis that are not wanting or don’t have bandwidth for contributors.
in reply to vsoch

@vsoch @AlanSill But if we filter for projects that have existing GFI's that would probably eliminate 90% of them.
in reply to Ben Fulton

@AlanSill that’s a really good point! It might take a while to set this up but Ill put it on my TODO to try.
in reply to vsoch

@AlanSill one question for the #RSEPedia - if we use it for getting issues, the first thing I'll add is a regular action that checks for 404s and similar. Should the default be to remove repositories that are no longer present, or archive the (likely not useful) metadata somewhere?
in reply to vsoch

Seems worth removing but logging that action. Archiving the metadata seems less useful as if it comes back, it seems likely that the metadata will need to be recreated anyway.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Alan Sill

@AlanSill okay clean and archive is underway! And I'm using the RESTFul endpoint of the #RSEPedia to get repository metadata and then look for GitHub issues with the "good first issue" label - and wow I'm finding a ton!

Methinks we will need to revamp the good-first-issues UI to be a little more searchable (akin to our hpc.social jobs board). I likely won't get to it tonight, but it's a WIP!

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