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Re: Struggling with keys to access all the stuff I need to use

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2023 8:27 pm
by arquebus
hiran wrote: Wed Nov 29, 2023 8:18 pm
If we had semantic versioning it would be even easier for humans to compare older and newer version. But well, we have what we have.
This (conter) intuitive stuff is not Github but the way we use it.
No, it's a problem I have with all software handled by Github. That service is meant for programmers, not for users, but a lot of products are only available on Github - with no curated non-Github page that is user-readable.

Github is not very navigable. For example, if I go to the top level for Oolite ( https://github.com/OoliteProject/ ) and then go to Nightlies ( https://github.com/OoliteProject/nightlies ), all the stuff on the left is absolute gibberish. I can only partially parse it because I have a bare minimum of programming/programming-related knowledge. Github by default doesn't really surface the user-readable stuff. So I go over to Releases on the right side and it shows "204 tags" (!). I don't even know what that means, but it's under Releases, so I click on it. And that gets me to this page: https://github.com/OoliteProject/nightlies/tags

And lo and behold, the most recent release listed there is from January 2022. (Except when you go to the downloads from that tag, the date is February 2022...?)

The issue isn't with the versioning nomenclature. It's just how Github is.

Re: Struggling with keys to access all the stuff I need to use

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2023 9:05 pm
by phkb
I agree - GitHub can be a confusing bucket of torment.

Here's the link you really wanted: https://github.com/OoliteProject/oolite/releases

To get there manually, go to the Oolite Project, select the "oolite" repository, then, on the right-hand side there's a "Releases" link with "15" in a gray circle. Click on "Releases" and you end up at the same spot I linked above.

There's also a pinned thread in each of the OS-specific sub-sections of the BB that has the same link.

Re: Struggling with keys to access all the stuff I need to use

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2023 9:15 pm
by hiran
BTW, what is the 'nightly' repository for? What was it used for? Do we still need it?

A lot of recent commits should be missing that happened in oolite, and the automatic builds are also not comparable.
All I can imagine is that it was used to test something before it would get pushed into the oolite repo - however that's what branches are for - isn't it?

Yet if we keep it as it is I can totally understand users are getting confused where to download 'the right stuff'.

Re: Struggling with keys to access all the stuff I need to use

Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2023 6:32 am
by another_commander
We had nightly builds long before github actions was a thing. The nightlies repo was an integral part of the mechanism in place for auto generating builds and was required to successfully publish them. Currently its use is limited. We normally would not need it, but it has to be kept around for these reasons:
1. It contains the most recent Mac build (1.91 from February 2022 - too old, but that's it for the Mac).
2. It contains the most recent Linux build that is guaranteed to run on any distro (same version as above).
3. The most important of all - it contains copies of all the branches that were apparently deleted during a cleanup that someone did at some point on our standard master. Amongst such branches is the headtrack branch, containing all the math and setup code needed in case we want to revisit head tracking in the future. Getafix had done an exceptional job back then and it would be a great pity if that was lost. Other experimental branches of interest might be in there as well.

Re: Struggling with keys to access all the stuff I need to use

Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2023 6:15 pm
by Cody
Nightly builds kept this dumb pilot occupied for almost a decade!

Re: Struggling with keys to access all the stuff I need to use

Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2023 8:13 pm
by hiran
another_commander wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2023 6:32 am
We had nightly builds long before github actions was a thing. The nightlies repo was an integral part of the mechanism in place for auto generating builds and was required to successfully publish them. Currently its use is limited. We normally would not need it, but it has to be kept around for these reasons:
1. It contains the most recent Mac build (1.91 from February 2022 - too old, but that's it for the Mac).
2. It contains the most recent Linux build that is guaranteed to run on any distro (same version as above).
3. The most important of all - it contains copies of all the branches that were apparently deleted during a cleanup that someone did at some point on our standard master. Amongst such branches is the headtrack branch, containing all the math and setup code needed in case we want to revisit head tracking in the future. Getafix had done an exceptional job back then and it would be a great pity if that was lost. Other experimental branches of interest might be in there as well.
So there is valuable information in it.
Could we mark it as 'archived' and move the important builds to the Oolite repository? Just to have one location where to look for stuff, while the information in the repo is retained and protected of any change?