Merge docs.scala-lang.org and scala-lang.org

[charafau]

Result from discussion on gitter from 17.10.2016 is that both sites should be merged.
I also asked about PRs that they're getting accepted and that Simon has done quite a lot of work with this so I would like to update website partialy. Should docs site be upgraded all at once ?

I could start working on this one.

Thanks

[SethTisue]

I don't think there is a consensus that the sites should be merged. There is some past history on this at #359, where @heathermiller made some arguments in favor of keeping the sites separate.

Some of that discussion is about the desirability of merging the sites, and some of it is about purely technical issues with merging.

On the subject of desirability, I personally consider the main barrier to be that scala-lang.org is generally high quality (material is missing, but the material that is there is generally good and up to date, or only needs small fixes), whereas a lot of docs.scala-lang.org is of only middling quality, or was once good quality but has now gotten woefully out of date. Unless that could somehow be fixed — it seems like an enormous effort to me — I'm more comfortable with continuing to have one small, highly curated site and one bigger, messier site. Right now "scala-lang.org" signals to me something I can probably trust and "docs.scala-lang.org" does not. Given that, taking all of the existing content on the latter and dumping it onto the former seems to me like a big step backwards, not forwards.

Although... perhaps you aren't actually proposing a wholesale merge? Is there particular content on docs.scala-lang.org that you think would be better hosted on scala-lang.org? It's plausible to me there are examples of that...? I haven't thought much about it.

As for the technical side...

One of the major technical issues has since been resolved: both sites are now buildable, without installing anything systemwide, using bundle exec jekyll. That got taken care of in #373; Simon's initial work on it was valuable.

One technical issue didn't get resolved, which is that the doc site takes an excessively long time to build. Perhaps someone would like to investigate and attempt to fix it? At one point, I think Simon had identified an issue having to do with the presence of different translations — something recursing into every translation of every translated page, that kind of thing? I'm not sure of the details. If he's right that it's fixable, a targeted PR simply fixing that one issue would be very very welcome. If someone out there can fix that, I will personally carry that person around Scala Days on my shoulders. (*) height/weight limit applies fixed!

[charafau]

I don't mind sites to be separated. Maybe docs.scala-lang.org should have the same look as scala-lang.org ?

I will take a look at docs site

[SethTisue]

Maybe docs.scala-lang.org should have the same look as scala-lang.org

SGTM for sure, and @heathermiller sounded positive about it, too, on that other PR ("Let's make the doc-site look like scala-lang, that's established")

[SethTisue]

oh, in what I wrote above about bringing the two sites closer in line with each other technically (since that could be relevant to bringing them closer in line in design, too), @lrytz took a stab at it #443 (now abandoned) — that could be work somebody could pick up. and if there are changes needed on EPFL servers, that could perhaps be coordinated with @fsalvi, depending on what's involved.

[SethTisue]

@travissarles over at scala/docs.scala-lang#782 (comment) you wrote:

I had talked about consolidation with @heathermiller but we decided against it for now

would you mind briefly summarizing that discussion here?

your work at scala/docs.scala-lang#781 brings the two sites in somewhat closer alignment, which is great. 👍

(P.S. I just deleted some old comments here on this ticket having to do with scala/docs.scala-lang#607, now long-since fixed.)