[Bf-committers] Wiki reorganization proposal

[mindrones]

Hi Davide,

--- On Sat, 1/17/09, Davide Vercelli <davide.vercelli at gmail.com> wrote:

> > 3) When people involved in python (you, jesterking,
> migius, meta-androcto, etc) decide a script is useful and
> technically ok, that script can be moved in the "Py
> Scripts Contrib" tracker and the script can be pushed
> in svn under bf-extensions/scripts/trunk/2_4x/contrib.
> > When people checkout bf-blender svn:
> > - under trunk/release/scripts they find scripts from
> bf-blender/scripts/trunk/2_4x/
> > - under trunk/release/scripts/contrib they find
> scripts from bf-blender/scripts/trunk/2_4x/contrib

first off, I apologize for having made some confusion on svn paths up here. It is:

When people checkout bf-blender svn:
- under trunk/release/scripts they find scripts from bf-EXTENSION/scripts/trunk/2_4x/
- under trunk/release/scripts/contrib they find scripts from bf-EXTENSION/scripts/trunk/2_4x/contrib

and for these long mails especially :)



> Does this mean that the script must always be in a working
> state? What
> if someone wants to continue development with major
> modifications? Is
> he allowed  to use this repository as an actual
> "development"
> repository?

About branches I have proposed them, but many were mumbling about it.
For example in out first chat Kent argued about permissions across 
branches and trunk
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User_talk:Mindrones/blender-wiki/proposal/workflow#Tracker_for_Plugins

My solution then is to use the tracker like this:
- you upload the script "unclezeiv_0.1.py", titled "unclezeiv",
- people start discussing in that page (under Upload tracker) and you add patches and upload new versions,
- at somepoint the script goes in svn Contrib, and we move the page in the Contrib tracker
- people use it, but you want to conntinue developing, so you continue to add patches or upload new versions in the page,
  but without pushing them to svn
- when the script is ready again, you can push it in svn again
- if you find this confusing we can add the version in the page title

I agree that people who use svn version might be confused reading the tracker, they use a certain version
in svn but you talk about new things in the tracker, ok. But how many people are really involved in the
development stage? Each blender's patch has from 0 to 10-15 answers in the discussion.

Note that since not all developers will have svn access, this should avoid crazyness (a script is not 2.5 I mean :)

The idea is to start with this process now that we are at 2.48, to test how it goes.
If the process shows to be proficient more people can manage this as admin, and so we balance the load somehow.

Well maintained, I think it can work. At least we can try to avoid things like a plugin developer quitting
for lack of interest... Look at this thread :)
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=91028
The developer of the greescreen plugin says:
"heh... 11 months later, someone noticed this thread...
[...]
.... but it never got enough attention for someone to even bother compiling a dll so I pretty much quit working on it."


> Another question is: is this three-level hierarchy really
> necessary?
> Maybe the uploads folder phase and the "contrib"
> phase could be
> somehow merged. Imagine if the "uploads" folder
> gets really popular:
> are you guys really going to review hundreds of scripts?

I'm new to Gforge but I see it can show % of activity of a
tracker, at least we can see what's going on and act on most active scripts.
Then, as Kent said, part of the job is to make people work together:
"anything to encourage people to work on them, while also maintaining a
certain level of quality. we have to encourage people to work as a 
team... otherwise you wind up with 50 different plugins that flip an image 
and they all are basically the same but have some stupid little 
difference."
....in that way 50 plugins becomes 1 (in theory :)


I took the idea of a Contrib folder from Mandriva tree
ftp://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/MandrivaLinux/official/2009.0/x86_64/media/

they have a Main and a Contrib, in Contrib people can put up rpms they
want, but Mandriva is responsible only for "Main".

The problem is that doing a package is not like developing new code :) and that's why I think
an Upload stage is better, or everything would go in svn, you need a filter.


> What if a
> script serves an obscure purpose, but is actually useful
> for many
> people?

Well I hope people will put a line in tracker to discuss or say thanks and we'll see that,
as it happens with Patches. You can click on "Monitor" in a tracker and you receive a mail for each message sent
to a tracker (that's how I do with Patches)

Also the bf-extensions does NOT have a mailing list attached to it, so people have to discuss in usual channels
and I hope that this will avoid them to be a niche.


> I would prefer to fix the interface in blender so
> that
> navigating through a *huge* number of scripts becomes
> easier, for
> instance allowing textual search into the scripts' help
> strings. I
> wouldn't mind downloading, like, a thousand scripts,
> even if 75% of
> them are poorly written/useless, because it would be far
> easier to
> find something interesting: right now if I'm looking
> for a script to
> solve a specific problem I have to look for it on the web,
> which takes
> time, and in the end it could still be outdated or poorly
> written.
> Scripts with technical merits and broad applicability will
> emerge
> eventually, anyway, and be natural candidates for an actual
> "release".


I completely agree. For now I think they will me merged in actual menus based on their "Group" in the script,
but we can ask Campbell and others what's possible here.


Thanks all for your interest  :)


Sincerely,
Luca

_____________

http://www.mindrones.com