usf-team team mailing list archive

[Gabriel Pettier <gabriel.pettier@xxxxxxxxx>]

why are we discussing the rant instead of the main thing? :P

About bzr, it appear you can branche without fully clone, a ubuntu dev
explained me you just use checkout to change branche inside the repo.
It does'nt  remove your other complains (I agree it's slow).

we could switch to git/github or gitorious (the last one being open
source, but maybe not as advanced) and maybe keep bzr in sinc by
regular imports?

Back on main topic!

I think we need a better workflow yes, the fact that i lack time
should not put the dev to a full stop, i know you all want to help,
(even if kizzo dream a lot about the future and should want to get is
hand more dirty with the present ;)), splitting the "todos" in
blueprints sound like a good idea and i think we should try it,
writing pre implementation stuff too, as it happens to me to start
something and leave it in a middle state as life catch up on my time,
and it's hard for others to continue without knowing where i'm going.

And I think, even if irc is convenient, that we should use more the
mailing list, as we can explain more things and messages here stay
forever in archives to look it up (as opposed to irc where finding an
information from the day before is often already an issue).

too everybody, thanks for your time on the project, i will do my best
to make it as useful as possible :).

regards.

2010/4/21 Edwin Marshall <aspidites@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Funny enough, I read the bazaar advocating post before the git one back in the day.
>
> A lack of code doesn't constitute a lack of contribution. If you contribute other ways that's great. In fact, I seem to recall you doing a lot with the wiki kizzo. As for code, a lack of commits from you shouldn't stop you from sharing wisdom of implementation methods. Though, I will say offering code does help raise creditability of the source of said wisdom.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: davidpkilgore@xxxxxxxxx
>> Sent: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 21:26:48 -0700
>> To: usf-team@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: Re: [Usf-team] Project Status
>>
>> Yeah I've been meaning to let the other devs know my most recent
>> thoughts - please disregard my written-down future plans for USF.  I'm
>> not contributing enough for my plans to really be considered (for
>> now), and I also feel that my plans are something too far into the
>> future anyway (I should worry about it later).
>>
>> With regards to Git/Bzr, one way I would try to get someone to use
>> something I like is to make it easy for others to use it.  So I
>> suggest that you might want to clone the main USF branch over to
>> GitHub, and be personably responsible for keeping it in sync with the
>> (currently) main Bazaar branch.  I've been meaning to try Git, and
>> I've heard good things about GitHub (I wish Launchpad was more social
>> like that).  People may also want to check out
>> http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/ and
>> http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/migration/en/why-switch-to-bazaar.html
>> to get a better idea of the differences.
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Edwin Marshall <aspidites@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>> Tshirtman and I were in IRC discussing various aspects of the projects
>>> current status, including goals, readiness, etc. While I did answer him
>>> briefly, I think it would benefit the team as a whole if my opinions
>>> were made more public.
>>>
>>> We both agreed that the lack of momentum in development has nothing to
>>> do with a lack of helping hands. In fact, for more than a year Tshirtman
>>> has been developing this thing by himself, so common since would say
>>> that development should be happening at a more rapid pace. After a bit
>>> of thinking, I think I have narrowed the cause of this decrease in
>>> productivity to a few things:
>>>
>>> No Clear Goals
>>> While we would all agree that network games, better characters, and a
>>> more developed AI are design goals for a 1.0 release, there doesn't seem
>>> to be any focus on any short-term goals. I am not proposing that there
>>> should be strict deadlines (the lack of which I  believe is tshirtman's
>>> way of not being imposing, and allowing us to have the freedom to deal
>>> with the real world -- this is a hobby project after all), but I think
>>> it would be great to have sensible goalds. For example - "It would be
>>> nice to have a few concepts for network games thought up by the end of
>>> this month". If we don't meet such flexible goals, then we should be
>>> able to communicate as to why they weren't met, not excepting things
>>> like "I don't have time". In fact, each members lack of time should be
>>> communicated before hand so that realistic goals can be properly set.
>>>
>>> No Ownership of Tasks
>>> In a lot of commercial projects, this solved by a project leader
>>> assigning tasks to different members. Clearly for our use case this is
>>> unsatisfactory, but it does have the benefit of holding people
>>> accountable, which generally ensures things get done. For our situation,
>>> I think it would be great if we started taking advantage of our
>>> blueprint tools. No one would be assigned to anything, but people could
>>> volunteer to take ownership of a specific aspect. Another idea I had on
>>> how we could begin to implement new features is a bit of a collaborative
>>> model:
>>>
>>> For the first week everyone submitted a draft implementation, which
>>> could be pseudo code, a flow chart, or a few paragraphs explaining how
>>> things would be implemented. After that, team members would comment on
>>> which implementation was best (most intuitive, practical, less
>>> performance impacting, etc). If the feature was a small feature, one
>>> person (not neccessarily the person who came up with the implementation)
>>> would finish it, otherwise, we could do some sort of pair programming.
>>>
>>> Using BZR
>>> Ok, this primarily a rant, but it does hold some truth in it. Either
>>> way, you can probably skip this entire section and stop reading this
>>> email :-).
>>>
>>> Problems with using bzr are as follows:
>>> 1. It is slow. Not only will it take longer for developers to get the
>>> code and help contribute, but for source-based/bleeding-edge distros, it
>>> means it will take that much longer to install and they may give up
>>> before finishing the download.
>>>
>>> 2. As a developer and a package maintainer it is cumbersome to test new
>>> releases. When I try to use my package manager to install usf from bzr,
>>> I get ssh/launchpad errors unless I disable my username in my bzr config
>>> file. Afterwards, in order to continue to contribute to the project I
>>> have to re-enable my user name
>>>
>>> 3. It is not as widely accepted (except among Ubuntu users). People may
>>> protest contributing code for the simple fact that they have to install
>>> yet another distributed version control system. Also, as far as I know,
>>> launchpad is the only web frontend to bzr.
>>>
>>> 4. Branching/Tagging. In order to work on a different 'branch' of code,
>>> I have to create a completely different repository, which is a waste of
>>> precious hard drive space. With, for example, git, I can do everything
>>> within the same directory.
>>>
>>> 5. Merges. I won't even say anything else about this.
>>>
>>> All these complaints being said, I do like the blueprints feature and
>>> the idea of getting points for contributions. While using bzr is not
>>> anything that will make me stop working on this cool game, I'll probably
>>> compain about it on a bi-weekly basis as my level of frustration rises
>>> :)
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Kizzo
>>
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