Eskild Hustvedt

Why GNA! is better than Savannah

In the beginning there was…blah, okay I won’t go that far. Though, the first host provider I used was SourceForge.net. I used that for three projects: GFSGL, GFSI and GoldenFiles. Mostly random stuff there, not too large projects.

Then one day I thought about this and well, using a proprietary website to produce and manage a free software project makes…well…no sense. So then I started looking at the alternatives. I landed on Savannah. My first Savannah project was GoldenPod. Followed by the (mostly dead) GoldenBackup (no link due to no website nor release, it does have a CVS though). Then followed by the common configuration parser. Then I had my disagreements with Savannah (as some of you might remember).

Then I started looking at GNA! which I am now using for my most active project, Day planner. Now what does GNA! have to offer that Savannah doesn’t? Well, it offers easier access to the downloads directory, I can simply rsync/scp stuff from my box to the GNA! download directory. It also has SVN which is imho MUCH better than CVS (I’ve never used Arch, so I won’t say anything about that). They also offer download/website statistics, something Savannah doesn’t. The only plus of Savannah I can find is some of their admins. I’ve spoken with a few of them and they where very nice, savannah also has an IRC channel (#savannah on freenode) which is rather nice. Though currently, I’ll take my GNA! without my Savannah if that is possible thank you very much.