[Bf-committers] Blender App Central / Add-on Manager

[bartius crouch]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 10:42 PM, Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Personally I'd like whatever system we use to be a front-end to source
> control (so devs commit our extension repo and magically get listed)

The proposal made by Moraes is very interesting imho. And most of the
information is already available, as I show in this mockup:
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=24170

Python can be used to traverse the SVN repository and find all
scripts. It doesn't even need to load the entire files, as it just
needs the header information.
If this is found to be a too large strain on the server, it might also
be possible to create a single file containing all headers, which is
updated once a day or on every commit. But this probably isn't
necessary yet.

For the expanded information of each script: it can be retrieved from
the wiki and the extensions tracker. Most addons already use a
standard template on the wiki, which eases this process even further.

This entire system has advantages for both artists and coders. Script
writers don't need to take any addtional steps to publish their addons
(or presets, themes, etc.) as the system uses the infrastructure that
is currently already in place. And secondly it exposes their work to a
larger group of users. For artists the main advantage is an
improvement in the ease of use.

The only two features that would need an expanded infrastructure are
the voting system and artist profiles that store their addon
collection. But it might be a good idea to first get the basics done
(with actual working code) and then add additional features.


- Bart