Unofficial Plugins

ok... starting to get off topic and may get another one of my posts beacon warped to the developers section... but anyways...

I think, in the area of plugins, Mit you (and even I  ) are authorized to commit stuff to SVN.  But Nat will roll up "approved" plugins into Community Releases after proper testing.  The code in SVN is not guaranteed to work correcrtly, it is only guaranteed to compile and not crash the bot (the only criteria I was told was a requirement prior to committing stuff to SVN).

"Core" however, is a different matter.  Nat will need to bless anything that people muck with in Core prior to committing anything to SVN.  Actually, I think Nat would prefer if none of us do any mucking around at all with the bot Core.

[CheckOut]

I believe Demerzel suggested that part of the Release process will be to CheckOut the current working snapshot of the plugins SVN when it is built. Therefore, as long as the SVN plugins compile (ie. do not crash the working bot) we're ok.

I personally would rather use the SVN differently, and have a working section where developers can *develop* plugins (and they May or May Not compile) and a separate Stable section where we can promote plugins that are of a Release standard. I see no need to make Official Plugin Releases (ie. Announcements) .. suffice that if users wish to upgrade, its simple to do so from the 'Stable' rather than 'Testing' folder on the Svn. I'm quite happy to take ownership of plugin development, and hence administer it in the same way Nat likes to do for the Core, but with users/casual devs having the option to submit/download new/testing ideas .. in more of an open-source fashion.

It could be, theoretically, possible for anonymous developers to post their plugin code directly to the SVN for consideration, but only authorised developers could promote them to the Stable/Release section - assuming SVN supported such methods.

I wonder whether Vhabot users might benefit from some form of voluntary mailing list .. to make it easier for users to become aware of updates .. particularly to plugin code, without having to be subscribed to the main forum. Thoughts anyone?

I'm fine with mucking with the Core, but certainly no commits without passing it by me. Like I've said, I have to know and make sure everything works before I post a community release.

Plugins can be commited as long as they basically compile. Display, etc don't exactly have to be finished, but they have to at least be worked on to be completed.

veremit: just focus on getting your plugins finished and commited before you worry about releases, Core etc

Mailing list isn't a bad idea, I can look into setting that up.

No no no no... that's not what SVN is for.  Mit, we're gonna end up with a huge mess in there if you use SVN as our community sandbox.

I think if something is being diddled with, it should not be checked in.  When something is working as advertised, then it can be checked in for someone else to check out and mucked with.  We are too small a project to open up the can of worms that is multiple simultaneous contributors and having to deal with code merging.  Collaboration is nice, but not with SVN.  I know that Nat and Dem make no guarantees about the stability of SVN releases, but out of respect to the community, we can't use it as a development playground.  The result will be chaos.  Trust me.

SVN is for those plugins that the project manager (in this case, I guess Nat?) blesses as being assimilated by vhabot as part of its "distributed plugins".  They get the official looking vh_ prefix on them, and then I will feel free to check them out, make improvements/bug fixes/display clean ups, and check them back in.

Mit, as the plugin guru, you have been making enhancements on a whole slew of already accepted "official" plugins, and so you should feel free to check in "working" versions of the plugins you have been working on.

I have been the trouble-maker with all the weird one-off plugins.  I'm waiting for various plugins to get adoption into project before I do any committing of files to the repository.  Most of the time I'm also waiting for beta testing of my plugins (ie the show up on one of your bots and we see what's broken).  Otherwise they're fine where they are -- as attachments in forum posts where all of our one-offs have been happy to reside in the past.

The only problem has been that I have been a prolific source of one-offs which have almost all required fixing up by you, which would make *your* life easier if there was an easier way to fix up and commit fixes to my half-baked plugins.  But just because I'm a lazy programmer and you need a better way to fix my problems doesn't make polluting the SVN repository the "right thing (r)" to do.

Llie, you're banging your head against the wall. I've said the same thing over and over to him. :p

Pfft. Well anyways .. thanks Nat .. I woke up this morning thinking that what I had done -was- wrong .. and the adjustment you have made will do nicely.

plugins-dev will contain Work-In-Progress, whilst Plugins will be known stable versions.

Huh, I was about to make some comment about where to direct complaints, and then it seems the whole issue is moot.  Mit actually satisfied with something... huh indeed... where's our Mit and what have done with him? 

BTW: can someone fix:

Code:

Error loading stylesheet: A network error occured loading an XSLT stylesheet:http://code.vhabot.net/svnindex.xsl

Thanks.

Lol .. ironically Llie, I posted a moan rant, then saw Nat had done exactly what I'd subsequently thought was the right adjustment to the svn .. so i wiped it and re-posted.

I found a solution to the Stylesheet issue online somewhere .. and passed it on to Dem. I'll look it up again, and post linky here too

Look here