replace img.shields.io w/ buckler

[chadwhitacre]

@olivierlacan and I decided last Friday (YouTube) to use Go for img.shields.io. @jbowes has a first cut at a Go version at https://github.com/jbowes/buckler. Sounds like (Twitter) he's willing to join efforts, and that @nathany is willing to pitch in as well.

@nathany and I just had a call to plan this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF4J5fcXiog#t=4m59s.

Here are the steps we came up with for bringing buckler on board:

1. @olivierlacan to add https://www.gittip.com/jbowes/ and https://www.gittip.com/nathany/ to https://www.gittip.com/Shields.io/members/. I suggest also adding @cainus since we've been using his https://github.com/cainus/shielded to date.
2. Assuming @jbowes is up for it, let's rename the existing img.shields.io repo to img.shields.io-old and move jbowes/buckler to gittip/img.shields.io.
3. Configure access to gittip/img.shields.io.

At that point we'll need to bring buckler up to "sea level" with where img.shields.io stands right now. Here's what we identified (these can all be tickets in the buckler→img.shields.io repo once we get clearance from @jbowes to proceed):

• Review PNG generation. Is buckler's output up to snuff, @olivierlacan? I'm taking replace img.shields.io w/ buckler #84 (comment) as a "yes" for 1x badges. 2x badges for retina is Shields are so fuzzy on retina screens they are basically unreadable buckler#17.
• Review colors (we currently support {green, yellowgreen, yellow, red, lightgray} instead of {hex, brightgreen, green, yellowgreen, yellow, orange, red, blue, lightgrey, grey}). See Document the colors supported by the custom Shield #74.
• Review the URLs (we currently use /first/second.png?color instead of /v1/first-second-color.png). Reticketed as revise URLs buckler#19.
• Implement status resolution w/ caching. Currently we hit an HTTP backend to resolve a token such as (travis-ci, rails/rails) into (build, passing). This will need to be a well-documented API as it will be how we on-board third-party services. Reticketed as implement status resolution w/ caching buckler#20.
• Configure hosting and DNS. Reticketed as configure DNS for img.shields.io buckler#21.

Once we're at sea level then we can cut over and start improving img.shields.io ahead of our Jan 29 launch date.

How about a target of December 22 to be done with the initial cut-over? That gives us a month to cut over and a month after that to add features for launch.

@jbowes Is this agreeable to you? If/when you're ready to pull the trigger let me know and we'll do the repo dance.

[nathany]

👍

@jbowes May also want to add a redirect from http://buckler.repl.ca/ to http://shields.io/ .. at least at the Jan 29 launch date.

[nathany]

Do we want to keep the image generation library/CLI in a separate repo from the web api endpoint?

[jbowes]

💯

Assuming @jbowes is up for it, let's rename the existing img.shields.io repo to img.shields.io-old and move...

I am! Let me know when I have the perms to do so, and I will transfer buckler ownership, then we can rename it.

[jbowes]

Do we want to keep the image generation library/CLI in a separate repo from the web api endpoint?

I like this idea. perhaps gittip/buckler could be the library/cli? Basically the old code with the http part removed.

[chadwhitacre]

@jbowes Okay, I've added you (as well as @nathany) as an admin on the Shields.io team. I've tested it out and I believe you should be able to transfer the Buckler repo to the Gittip organization now. Maybe you can even add that repo to the Shields.io team at that point? If not I'll do so.

I'm fine with keeping the library/cli and http parts in separate repos.

[nathany]

@jbowes Alternatively, we could just arrange the repo with a pkg/buckler folder for the image library (that could still technically be imported independently from the http part). That spares us from dependency management and switching between repos. Your call.

[olivierlacan]

@whit537 @nathany @jbowes Sorry to come in so late. Had a very interesting last few weeks and had to shift most of my focus to personal stuff.

As @whit537 mentioned I think during the call, unlike shielded it looks like buckler doesn't support double resolution images yet which is something we'd really like to be able to support at launch.

PNG Output Quality

Shadows

As with the current PNG output quality of buckler, it doesn't have the green tint in the shadows I've noticed on shielded's output, see below:

Looks much nicer from buckler:

For reference, this is the reference PNG from the original Shields projects:

Font Rendering

I find the font rendering and kerning more satisfying too on the buckler output.

Overall it's a welcome change and I'm excited about the swap. Do we have any benchmark to compare how much faster buckler is? It's not a big deal, I'm just curious. 😸 /cc @jbowes

@jbowes @nathany have been added to the Shields's Gittip Team. Please up your take folks, it's easier for me to redistribute my gains to other open source contributors and I encourage you to do the same unless you need to money for yourselves right now.

[chadwhitacre]

@jbowes has moved the buckler repo to Gittip (Twitter). I've renamed it to img.shields.io and added it as a repo to the Shields.io team. I'm going to reticket the items in the description above over on that repo and then close this ticket.

[chadwhitacre]

I've also set up a Huboard (cf. #86):

https://huboard.com/gittip/img.shields.io/beta

[chadwhitacre]

Okay! Everything reticketed. Closing! :-)

!m *