[WWWDOCS] htdocs: add an Atom feed for GCC news

  This patch adds an Atom feed for GCC news, which can then be easily
aggregated in other sites, such as the GNU planet
(https://planet.gnu.org).

The feed lives in a file news.xml, and this patch initializes it with
the latest entry in News as an example.
---
 htdocs/index.html |  9 ++++++++-
 htdocs/news.xml   | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 36 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
 create mode 100644 htdocs/news.xml
  

Hi!

On 2022-12-23T10:50:13+0100, "Jose E. Marchesi via Gcc-patches" <gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> This patch adds an Atom feed for GCC news, which can then be easily
> aggregated in other sites, such as the GNU planet
> (https://planet.gnu.org).
>
> The feed lives in a file news.xml, and this patch initializes it with
> the latest entry in News as an example.

I absolutely agree that providing such an RSS feed is a good thing
(..., and that we generally should make better use of our News section,
and other "PR"...) -- but I'm less convinced by the prospect of manually
editing the RSS 'news.xml' file, duplicating in a (potentially) different
format what we've got in the HTML News section.  :-|

Ideally, there'd be some simple files for News items (Markdown, or
similar), which are then converted into HTML News as well as RSS feed.
Obviously, there needs to be some consensus on what to use, and somebody
needs to set up the corresponding machinery...

Or do others think that manual 'news.xml' maintenance is not so bad (for
now)?


Grüße
 Thomas


> ---
>  htdocs/index.html |  9 ++++++++-
>  htdocs/news.xml   | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  2 files changed, 36 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>  create mode 100644 htdocs/news.xml
>
> diff --git a/htdocs/index.html b/htdocs/index.html
> index e91fadf1..2ddee6f6 100644
> --- a/htdocs/index.html
> +++ b/htdocs/index.html
> @@ -6,6 +6,9 @@
>  <meta name="google-site-verification" content="FUv_3eEIkimd6LAoWned4TPMqmKKQmw3aA2_PBJ5SAY">
>  <title>GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection</title>
>  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc.css">
> +<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
> +      title="News about the GNU Compiler Collection"
> +      href="news.xml"/>
>  </head>
>
>  <set-var navigation>
> @@ -48,7 +51,11 @@ mission statement</a>.</p>
>
>  <!-- Note: We usually want to rotate news to the "old news" page when
>       it's more than 12 months old or the News pane on this page has
> -     become longer than the parallel one, whatever happens first.
> +     become longer than the parallel one, whatever happens first.
> +
> +     Note: There is an Atom feed in news.xml, which is aggregated by
> +     some news aggregators and "planets".  It is likely you want to
> +     add a new item there with the good news.
>  -->
>
>  <td class="news border0">
> diff --git a/htdocs/news.xml b/htdocs/news.xml
> new file mode 100644
> index 00000000..bebcaa66
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/htdocs/news.xml
> @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
> +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> +
> +<rss version="2.0">
> +  <channel>
> +    <title>News about the GNU Compiler Collection</title>
> +    <link>https://gcc.gnu.org</link>
> +    <description>
> +      The GNU Compiler Collection includes front ends for C, C++,
> +      Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D, as well as libraries for
> +      these languages (libstdc++,...). GCC was originally written as
> +      the compiler for the GNU operating system. The GNU system was
> +      developed to be 100% free software, free in the sense that it
> +      respects the user's freedom.
> +    </description>
> +
> +    <item>
> +      <title>GCC BPF in Compiler Explorer</title>
> +      <link>https://godbolt.org</link>
> +      <description>
> +        Support for a nightly build of the bpf-unknown-none-gcc
> +        compiler has been contributed to Compiler Explorer (aka
> +        godbolt.org) by Marc Poulhiès
> +      </description>
> +      <pubDate>Fri, 23 December 2022 11:00:00 CET</pubDate>
> +    </item>
> +
> +  </channel>
> +</rss>
> --
> 2.30.2
-----------------
Siemens Electronic Design Automation GmbH; Anschrift: Arnulfstraße 201, 80634 München; Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung; Geschäftsführer: Thomas Heurung, Frank Thürauf; Sitz der Gesellschaft: München; Registergericht München, HRB 106955
  

> Hi!
>
> On 2022-12-23T10:50:13+0100, "Jose E. Marchesi via Gcc-patches" <gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>> This patch adds an Atom feed for GCC news, which can then be easily
>> aggregated in other sites, such as the GNU planet
>> (https://planet.gnu.org).
>>
>> The feed lives in a file news.xml, and this patch initializes it with
>> the latest entry in News as an example.
>
> I absolutely agree that providing such an RSS feed is a good thing
> (..., and that we generally should make better use of our News section,
> and other "PR"...) -- but I'm less convinced by the prospect of manually
> editing the RSS 'news.xml' file, duplicating in a (potentially) different
> format what we've got in the HTML News section.  :-|
>
> Ideally, there'd be some simple files for News items (Markdown, or
> similar), which are then converted into HTML News as well as RSS feed.
> Obviously, there needs to be some consensus on what to use, and somebody
> needs to set up the corresponding machinery...
>
> Or do others think that manual 'news.xml' maintenance is not so bad (for
> now)?

I would like to point out that I have maintained these kind of feeds for
my own sites for years, and that in my humble personal experience unless
there are a lot of updates, like more than a couple of new entries per
month, any automated schema would be overkill, prone to rot, and not
really worth the effort.

I strongly suggest to not overengineer here [and nowhere else :)]

>
> Grüße
>  Thomas
>
>
>> ---
>>  htdocs/index.html |  9 ++++++++-
>>  htdocs/news.xml   | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>  2 files changed, 36 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>  create mode 100644 htdocs/news.xml
>>
>> diff --git a/htdocs/index.html b/htdocs/index.html
>> index e91fadf1..2ddee6f6 100644
>> --- a/htdocs/index.html
>> +++ b/htdocs/index.html
>> @@ -6,6 +6,9 @@
>>  <meta name="google-site-verification" content="FUv_3eEIkimd6LAoWned4TPMqmKKQmw3aA2_PBJ5SAY">
>>  <title>GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection</title>
>>  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc.css">
>> +<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
>> +      title="News about the GNU Compiler Collection"
>> +      href="news.xml"/>
>>  </head>
>>
>>  <set-var navigation>
>> @@ -48,7 +51,11 @@ mission statement</a>.</p>
>>
>>  <!-- Note: We usually want to rotate news to the "old news" page when
>>       it's more than 12 months old or the News pane on this page has
>> -     become longer than the parallel one, whatever happens first.
>> +     become longer than the parallel one, whatever happens first.
>> +
>> +     Note: There is an Atom feed in news.xml, which is aggregated by
>> +     some news aggregators and "planets".  It is likely you want to
>> +     add a new item there with the good news.
>>  -->
>>
>>  <td class="news border0">
>> diff --git a/htdocs/news.xml b/htdocs/news.xml
>> new file mode 100644
>> index 00000000..bebcaa66
>> --- /dev/null
>> +++ b/htdocs/news.xml
>> @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
>> +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
>> +
>> +<rss version="2.0">
>> +  <channel>
>> +    <title>News about the GNU Compiler Collection</title>
>> +    <link>https://gcc.gnu.org</link>
>> +    <description>
>> +      The GNU Compiler Collection includes front ends for C, C++,
>> +      Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D, as well as libraries for
>> +      these languages (libstdc++,...). GCC was originally written as
>> +      the compiler for the GNU operating system. The GNU system was
>> +      developed to be 100% free software, free in the sense that it
>> +      respects the user's freedom.
>> +    </description>
>> +
>> +    <item>
>> +      <title>GCC BPF in Compiler Explorer</title>
>> +      <link>https://godbolt.org</link>
>> +      <description>
>> +        Support for a nightly build of the bpf-unknown-none-gcc
>> +        compiler has been contributed to Compiler Explorer (aka
>> +        godbolt.org) by Marc Poulhiès
>> +      </description>
>> +      <pubDate>Fri, 23 December 2022 11:00:00 CET</pubDate>
>> +    </item>
>> +
>> +  </channel>
>> +</rss>
>> --
>> 2.30.2
> -----------------
> Siemens Electronic Design Automation GmbH; Anschrift: Arnulfstraße
> 201, 80634 München; Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung;
> Geschäftsführer: Thomas Heurung, Frank Thürauf; Sitz der Gesellschaft:
> München; Registergericht München, HRB 106955
  

>> Hi!
>>
>> On 2022-12-23T10:50:13+0100, "Jose E. Marchesi via Gcc-patches" <gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>>> This patch adds an Atom feed for GCC news, which can then be easily
>>> aggregated in other sites, such as the GNU planet
>>> (https://planet.gnu.org).
>>>
>>> The feed lives in a file news.xml, and this patch initializes it with
>>> the latest entry in News as an example.
>>
>> I absolutely agree that providing such an RSS feed is a good thing
>> (..., and that we generally should make better use of our News section,
>> and other "PR"...) -- but I'm less convinced by the prospect of manually
>> editing the RSS 'news.xml' file, duplicating in a (potentially) different
>> format what we've got in the HTML News section.  :-|
>>
>> Ideally, there'd be some simple files for News items (Markdown, or
>> similar), which are then converted into HTML News as well as RSS feed.
>> Obviously, there needs to be some consensus on what to use, and somebody
>> needs to set up the corresponding machinery...
>>
>> Or do others think that manual 'news.xml' maintenance is not so bad (for
>> now)?
>
> I would like to point out that I have maintained these kind of feeds for
> my own sites for years, and that in my humble personal experience unless
> there are a lot of updates, like more than a couple of new entries per
> month, any automated schema would be overkill, prone to rot, and not
> really worth the effort.
>
> I strongly suggest to not overengineer here [and nowhere else :)]

I forgot to mention that it is also useful to have fine-grain control of
what you publish on what feed.

Not all the news may be appropriate for all feeds.  For example, I have
a separated feed in my site for entries I want to aggregate in the GNU
Planet.  Other stuff, which is more personal in nature, is included in a
more general feed, or not included in a feed at all.

Not sure if this really applies to the case in hand, which is the GCC
News, but that is another reason why I maintain my feeds manually as
proposed in the patch..

>
>>
>> Grüße
>>  Thomas
>>
>>
>>> ---
>>>  htdocs/index.html |  9 ++++++++-
>>>  htdocs/news.xml   | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>  2 files changed, 36 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>>  create mode 100644 htdocs/news.xml
>>>
>>> diff --git a/htdocs/index.html b/htdocs/index.html
>>> index e91fadf1..2ddee6f6 100644
>>> --- a/htdocs/index.html
>>> +++ b/htdocs/index.html
>>> @@ -6,6 +6,9 @@
>>>  <meta name="google-site-verification" content="FUv_3eEIkimd6LAoWned4TPMqmKKQmw3aA2_PBJ5SAY">
>>>  <title>GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection</title>
>>>  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc.css">
>>> +<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
>>> +      title="News about the GNU Compiler Collection"
>>> +      href="news.xml"/>
>>>  </head>
>>>
>>>  <set-var navigation>
>>> @@ -48,7 +51,11 @@ mission statement</a>.</p>
>>>
>>>  <!-- Note: We usually want to rotate news to the "old news" page when
>>>       it's more than 12 months old or the News pane on this page has
>>> -     become longer than the parallel one, whatever happens first.
>>> +     become longer than the parallel one, whatever happens first.
>>> +
>>> +     Note: There is an Atom feed in news.xml, which is aggregated by
>>> +     some news aggregators and "planets".  It is likely you want to
>>> +     add a new item there with the good news.
>>>  -->
>>>
>>>  <td class="news border0">
>>> diff --git a/htdocs/news.xml b/htdocs/news.xml
>>> new file mode 100644
>>> index 00000000..bebcaa66
>>> --- /dev/null
>>> +++ b/htdocs/news.xml
>>> @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
>>> +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
>>> +
>>> +<rss version="2.0">
>>> +  <channel>
>>> +    <title>News about the GNU Compiler Collection</title>
>>> +    <link>https://gcc.gnu.org</link>
>>> +    <description>
>>> +      The GNU Compiler Collection includes front ends for C, C++,
>>> +      Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D, as well as libraries for
>>> +      these languages (libstdc++,...). GCC was originally written as
>>> +      the compiler for the GNU operating system. The GNU system was
>>> +      developed to be 100% free software, free in the sense that it
>>> +      respects the user's freedom.
>>> +    </description>
>>> +
>>> +    <item>
>>> +      <title>GCC BPF in Compiler Explorer</title>
>>> +      <link>https://godbolt.org</link>
>>> +      <description>
>>> +        Support for a nightly build of the bpf-unknown-none-gcc
>>> +        compiler has been contributed to Compiler Explorer (aka
>>> +        godbolt.org) by Marc Poulhiès
>>> +      </description>
>>> +      <pubDate>Fri, 23 December 2022 11:00:00 CET</pubDate>
>>> +    </item>
>>> +
>>> +  </channel>
>>> +</rss>
>>> --
>>> 2.30.2
>> -----------------
>> Siemens Electronic Design Automation GmbH; Anschrift: Arnulfstraße
>> 201, 80634 München; Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung;
>> Geschäftsführer: Thomas Heurung, Frank Thürauf; Sitz der Gesellschaft:
>> München; Registergericht München, HRB 106955
  

On Wed, 11 Jan 2023, Thomas Schwinge wrote:
> On 2022-12-23T10:50:13+0100, "Jose E. Marchesi via Gcc-patches" <gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>> This patch adds an Atom feed for GCC news, which can then be easily 
>> aggregated in other sites, such as the GNU planet 
>> (https://planet.gnu.org).
> I absolutely agree that providing such an RSS feed is a good thing
> (..., and that we generally should make better use of our News section,
> and other "PR"...) -- but I'm less convinced by the prospect of manually
> editing the RSS 'news.xml' file, duplicating in a (potentially) different
> format what we've got in the HTML News section.  :-|

Agreed, yet...

> Ideally, there'd be some simple files for News items (Markdown, or
> similar), which are then converted into HTML News as well as RSS feed.
> Obviously, there needs to be some consensus on what to use, and somebody
> needs to set up the corresponding machinery...

...how are we going to get to that?


On Thu, 12 Jan 2023, Jose E. Marchesi wrote:
> I would like to point out that I have maintained these kind of feeds for
> my own sites for years, and that in my humble personal experience unless
> there are a lot of updates, like more than a couple of new entries per
> month, any automated schema would be overkill, prone to rot, and not
> really worth the effort.

That is a bit of a concern. I'd love having a single source that feeds 
both the News section on our main page, rolls over into news.html, and
also feeds the Atom feed (no pun intended).

On the other hand, with less than a dozen entries per year, even if 
manually converting form one to the other takes 5 minutes, creating 
such a machinery wouldn't amortize anytime soon

> I strongly suggest to not overengineer here [and nowhere else :)]

I am tempted to agree (even if the engineer in me would prefer to avoid 
duplication). Jose, might you be willing to help others create Atom feed
entries?

What do others think?

Gerald
  

On Fri, 23 Dec 2022, Jose E. Marchesi via Gcc-patches wrote:
> This patch adds an Atom feed for GCC news

I was going to approve, would like to see a bit consensus with others 
though.


For now some review:

>  <!-- Note: We usually want to rotate news to the "old news" page when
>       it's more than 12 months old or the News pane on this page has
> -     become longer than the parallel one, whatever happens first. 
> +     become longer than the parallel one, whatever happens first.
> +
> +     Note: There is an Atom feed in news.xml, which is aggregated by
> +     some news aggregators and "planets".  It is likely you want to
> +     add a new item there with the good news.
>  -->

I recommend switching the two notes. The one on the feed feels more 
important since that aspect is easier to miss than the required rotation 
(which visually presents itself when one looks at our web site).

> +++ b/htdocs/news.xml
> @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
> +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> +
> +<rss version="2.0">
> +  <channel>
> +    <title>News about the GNU Compiler Collection</title>
> +    <link>https://gcc.gnu.org</link>
> +    <description>
> +      The GNU Compiler Collection includes front ends for C, C++,
> +      Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D, as well as libraries for
> +      these languages (libstdc++,...). GCC was originally written as
> +      the compiler for the GNU operating system. The GNU system was
> +      developed to be 100% free software, free in the sense that it
> +      respects the user's freedom.
> +    </description>

Looks like we should think of updating our description (though that's 
beyond the scope of your patch), for example talking more about the many 
platforms supported and less about history.

> +    <item>
> +      <title>GCC BPF in Compiler Explorer</title>
> +      <link>https://godbolt.org</link>
> +      <description>
> +        Support for a nightly build of the bpf-unknown-none-gcc
> +        compiler has been contributed to Compiler Explorer (aka
> +        godbolt.org) by Marc Poulhiès

Would this be full sentences (with a full stop)?

When one adds additional entries, do those come at the beginning or the 
end? (Could there be a comment?)

> +      <pubDate>Fri, 23 December 2022 11:00:00 CET</pubDate>

On the web site we use ISO dates - any issues with that?

And does the feed require time of day, or could we omit that? (Especially 
with different timezones we all are in?)

Gerald
  

> On Wed, 11 Jan 2023, Thomas Schwinge wrote:
>> On 2022-12-23T10:50:13+0100, "Jose E. Marchesi via Gcc-patches"
>> <gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>>> This patch adds an Atom feed for GCC news, which can then be easily 
>>> aggregated in other sites, such as the GNU planet 
>>> (https://planet.gnu.org).
>> I absolutely agree that providing such an RSS feed is a good thing
>> (..., and that we generally should make better use of our News section,
>> and other "PR"...) -- but I'm less convinced by the prospect of manually
>> editing the RSS 'news.xml' file, duplicating in a (potentially) different
>> format what we've got in the HTML News section.  :-|
>
> Agreed, yet...
>
>> Ideally, there'd be some simple files for News items (Markdown, or
>> similar), which are then converted into HTML News as well as RSS feed.
>> Obviously, there needs to be some consensus on what to use, and somebody
>> needs to set up the corresponding machinery...
>
> ...how are we going to get to that?
>
>
> On Thu, 12 Jan 2023, Jose E. Marchesi wrote:
>> I would like to point out that I have maintained these kind of feeds for
>> my own sites for years, and that in my humble personal experience unless
>> there are a lot of updates, like more than a couple of new entries per
>> month, any automated schema would be overkill, prone to rot, and not
>> really worth the effort.
>
> That is a bit of a concern. I'd love having a single source that feeds 
> both the News section on our main page, rolls over into news.html, and
> also feeds the Atom feed (no pun intended).
>
> On the other hand, with less than a dozen entries per year, even if 
> manually converting form one to the other takes 5 minutes, creating 
> such a machinery wouldn't amortize anytime soon

Yeah I guess it all depends on how much the news section is used.

I personally think that it would be beneficial for the different GCC
projects (front-ends, back-ends, etc) to be a little more vocal, public
wise.  Releasing news items more often may help with that.

Of course one could argue that making it easier to add news to the
system (without having to manually rotate the .html file, add to the
feed if desired, etc) would help with that.  And probably would be right
:D

>> I strongly suggest to not overengineer here [and nowhere else :)]
>
> I am tempted to agree (even if the engineer in me would prefer to avoid 
> duplication). Jose, might you be willing to help others create Atom feed
> entries?

Sure.  It is as easy as adding one of these things to the .xml file:

    <item>
      <title>Rhhw Friday 16 March 2018 - Sunday 18 March 2018 @
      Frankfurt am Main</title>
      <link>http://jemarch.net/rhhw.html#16march2018</link>
      <description>
        The Rabbit Herd will be meeting the weekend from 16 March to
        18 March.
      </description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 12 March 2018 15:00:00 CET</pubDate>
    </item>

To be sure nothing breaks we may run a XML validator on the server to
reject pushes that break the .xml file.  There must be an XML schema for
XML Atom feeds somewhere..

> What do others think?
>
> Gerald
  

Hi,

"Jose E. Marchesi via Gcc-patches" <gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org> writes:

> Yeah I guess it all depends on how much the news section is used.
>
> I personally think that it would be beneficial for the different GCC
> projects (front-ends, back-ends, etc) to be a little more vocal, public
> wise.  Releasing news items more often may help with that.
>
> Of course one could argue that making it easier to add news to the
> system (without having to manually rotate the .html file, add to the
> feed if desired, etc) would help with that.  And probably would be right
> :D

Should that happen, it should be quite trivial to put together (for
instance) a Python+Jinja2 or Perl script to generate both forms from a
common source.  That should be very little engineering ;).

In addition, such a program would make it easy to also provide RSS feeds
besides the Atom ones, which some might benefit from (IIRC, Gnus doesn't
ship Atom support yet, for instance).

I am in favor of putting more words out there, news tends to grab
attention, which could benefit both users and the project.

>>> I strongly suggest to not overengineer here [and nowhere else :)]
>>
>> I am tempted to agree (even if the engineer in me would prefer to avoid 
>> duplication). Jose, might you be willing to help others create Atom feed
>> entries?
>
> Sure.  It is as easy as adding one of these things to the .xml file:
>
>     <item>
>       <title>Rhhw Friday 16 March 2018 - Sunday 18 March 2018 @
>       Frankfurt am Main</title>
>       <link>http://jemarch.net/rhhw.html#16march2018</link>
>       <description>
>         The Rabbit Herd will be meeting the weekend from 16 March to
>         18 March.
>       </description>
>       <pubDate>Mon, 12 March 2018 15:00:00 CET</pubDate>
>     </item>
>
> To be sure nothing breaks we may run a XML validator on the server to
> reject pushes that break the .xml file.  There must be an XML schema for
> XML Atom feeds somewhere..

The W3C provides a validator for feeds too:
https://validator.w3.org/feed/ and indeed, there's a schema, see RFC4287
appendix B (<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4287#appendix-B>).

>> What do others think?
>>
>> Gerald

Hope that helps!