mvBarracuda
Vault Dweller
Good day fellow modders 
The idea for this topic was brought up at the killap restoration project thread. As the thread is one of the most active ones here in the modding forums it's quite easy to overread the proposal that was brought up there. Therefore I'm doing some agenda setting and open a separate thread here, hoping that it gets more attention this way.
Some days ago a modder called Nevill decided to fix some of the bugs that were found in killap's restoration project and uploaded them so others could use the fixes:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40590&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=999
There seem to be a bunch of bugs to take care of and I personally think it would be a good idea if we could build up an infrastructure that would give at least everyone the chance to disburden killap and improve the restoration project and his patch.
Therefore I propose to put killap's patch as well as his restoration project under version control. I did initially bring up this proposal in the restoration project as well:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40590&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=1000
For everyone who is not familiar with version control, give this wikipedia entry a read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
Subversion is the currently most popular free (as in beer & speech) version control solution. It's not that hard to set up and other tools, e.g. trac (a task tracker system) integrate quite nicely into it. Luckily a forums user called dark beholder offered to set up a SVN & trac repository for killap's projects for free! You can read about his offer here:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40590&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=1002
Before I bore anyone with a long rant let me summarize my arguments why I think it would be useful to put killap's projects under version control:
1. We could disburden killap this way as he wouldn't need to fix all of the bugs on his own. This could furthermore help to have more frequent releases.
2. That doesn't mean killap needs to give up the creative control over the project. Contributors can hand in their fixes and new assets as attachments of trac tickets and killap can decide if they find their way into the project. Furthermore killap should decide who gets write access to the SVN repository. If fixes that were created by other modders don't find their way into the official projects, intestered modders have at least a new central place where they could look for 3rd party patches for killap's projects.
3. Subversion makes it far easier to keep track of changes as doing "version control" via an ftp . Futhermore you have the chance to introduce branches for the projects. Stable tested versions could reside in trunk while bleeding edge & experimental fixes and changes reside in different branches.
4. With anonymous checkout it would be far easier for interested users to follow the development of killap's project. You could run a simple SVN update and find out if there have been any changes lately right away.
5. Trac offers some nice additional features that make working with Subversion even more fun. Some nice examples are an SVN file browser, a ticket tracker and a roadmap tool. All of them could be used in a meaningful way for killap's project. Examples that show these features in action are linked below.
6. This project could serve as a good example how to properly manage modding projects. A lot of modding projects still seem to heavily rely on using an ftp for storing assets and code. The main reason seems to be that people are often "afraid" of version control as it comes from the obscure and scary world of software development and programming. By using Subversion in such a project, modders can familiarize themselves with the concept of version control, even by simply installing a SVN client and doing a first checkout of the repository.
7. Last but not least Subversion is really easy to use, even on win32. I yet have to find a windows users who understands the basics of the windows explorer but has a hard time to work with TortoiseSVN. TortoiseSVN is an easy to use SVN client for windows that integrates into the explorer.
Here are some additional links in case you want to know more about the proposed software solutions:
Subversion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversion_(software)
TortoiseSVN: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TortoiseSVN
Trac: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trac
Trac changeset example: http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/timeline
Trac filebrowser example: http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/browser
Trac ticket tracker example: http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/report/1
Feedback please
The idea for this topic was brought up at the killap restoration project thread. As the thread is one of the most active ones here in the modding forums it's quite easy to overread the proposal that was brought up there. Therefore I'm doing some agenda setting and open a separate thread here, hoping that it gets more attention this way.Some days ago a modder called Nevill decided to fix some of the bugs that were found in killap's restoration project and uploaded them so others could use the fixes:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40590&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=999
There seem to be a bunch of bugs to take care of and I personally think it would be a good idea if we could build up an infrastructure that would give at least everyone the chance to disburden killap and improve the restoration project and his patch.
Therefore I propose to put killap's patch as well as his restoration project under version control. I did initially bring up this proposal in the restoration project as well:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40590&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=1000
For everyone who is not familiar with version control, give this wikipedia entry a read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
Subversion is the currently most popular free (as in beer & speech) version control solution. It's not that hard to set up and other tools, e.g. trac (a task tracker system) integrate quite nicely into it. Luckily a forums user called dark beholder offered to set up a SVN & trac repository for killap's projects for free! You can read about his offer here:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40590&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=1002
Before I bore anyone with a long rant let me summarize my arguments why I think it would be useful to put killap's projects under version control:
1. We could disburden killap this way as he wouldn't need to fix all of the bugs on his own. This could furthermore help to have more frequent releases.
2. That doesn't mean killap needs to give up the creative control over the project. Contributors can hand in their fixes and new assets as attachments of trac tickets and killap can decide if they find their way into the project. Furthermore killap should decide who gets write access to the SVN repository. If fixes that were created by other modders don't find their way into the official projects, intestered modders have at least a new central place where they could look for 3rd party patches for killap's projects.
3. Subversion makes it far easier to keep track of changes as doing "version control" via an ftp . Futhermore you have the chance to introduce branches for the projects. Stable tested versions could reside in trunk while bleeding edge & experimental fixes and changes reside in different branches.
4. With anonymous checkout it would be far easier for interested users to follow the development of killap's project. You could run a simple SVN update and find out if there have been any changes lately right away.
5. Trac offers some nice additional features that make working with Subversion even more fun. Some nice examples are an SVN file browser, a ticket tracker and a roadmap tool. All of them could be used in a meaningful way for killap's project. Examples that show these features in action are linked below.
6. This project could serve as a good example how to properly manage modding projects. A lot of modding projects still seem to heavily rely on using an ftp for storing assets and code. The main reason seems to be that people are often "afraid" of version control as it comes from the obscure and scary world of software development and programming. By using Subversion in such a project, modders can familiarize themselves with the concept of version control, even by simply installing a SVN client and doing a first checkout of the repository.
7. Last but not least Subversion is really easy to use, even on win32. I yet have to find a windows users who understands the basics of the windows explorer but has a hard time to work with TortoiseSVN. TortoiseSVN is an easy to use SVN client for windows that integrates into the explorer.
Here are some additional links in case you want to know more about the proposed software solutions:
Subversion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversion_(software)
TortoiseSVN: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TortoiseSVN
Trac: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trac
Trac changeset example: http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/timeline
Trac filebrowser example: http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/browser
Trac ticket tracker example: http://mirror1.cvsdude.com/trac/fife/engine/report/1
Feedback please
Really, I do not understand why you need my opinion on this. It's not like I am going to do this on a regular basis. I just fixed what I thought was broken and I was too lazy to write a bugreport on that script (so that killap could fix it himself) because it would be incredibly long. So I uploaded my file instead.