Oolite Bulletins

Cmdr James wrote:

One thing that would be nice would be a version control system (svn?). This would give visibility of changes, and give the potential to prevent loss of work if OXPs become abandoned (at least all source would be available).

SVN requires installation of binaries, which I can't do on the server I currently use. If you can find a system that uses Perl, Python, or PHP scripts (and MySQL), it should be feasible..

If it allows me to drop in and check how many people have downloaded my stuff for some occasional ego-stroking (yes, I confess, sometimes it is nice ), I am perfectly happy with hosting my OXPs on a central repository instead of box.net.

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

I really like the stats and controls available with Box.net. I'd LOVE to have the functionality of the central repository. Is there any chance we can get the best of both? The repository's centrality and customization (and hopefully automation, please please please?), and Box.net's stats / feedback?

Cmd. Cheyd, could you elaborate on your request for 'automation' please? What would you like to see automated?

I only have a free box.net account, so the only stats I get are total number of downloads, and a maximum of 1 email notification per day (I think) of a particular file being downloaded. Paid box.net accounts get the following, so far as I can tell..

* Individual downloads broken out by day and time
* IP addresses that download this file
* Names of people when they have Box.net accounts

Is this the level of detail you guys would like? Is there anything else in the way of statistics you can think of that you'd like to see?

goran wrote:

My www.superbit.com is built on Joomla and I'm very satisfied with it, never lost any data and only hurdle in 2,5 years was migrating from 1.0.x to 1.5.x. Lot's of plugins and free themes for the lazy ones.

The site appears to be non-active.. all I get is what looks to be a domain registry or hosting company placeholder page.

Diziet Sma wrote:

goran wrote:

My www.superbit.com is built on Joomla and I'm very satisfied with it, never lost any data and only hurdle in 2,5 years was migrating from 1.0.x to 1.5.x. Lot's of plugins and free themes for the lazy ones.

The site appears to be non-active.. all I get is what looks to be a domain registry or hosting company placeholder page.

That's what You get when typing in a hurry... it should be www.superbit.hr

Dizzy - this will be a project-and-a-half

One bit of functionality I'd like to see is a periodic email to people registered on the site, advertising new oxps that they currently don't have. I would have discovered Snoopers, for example, much sooner this way.

How closely would/could/should 'OXP Central' integrate with the Wiki? It's been touched on briefly in previous posts, but no clear view. If all OXP content is to be carved out of the Wiki, if that's where we're headed, we should at least go there consciously.

From an eggs and baskets point of view, how long can you guarantee that 'OXP Central' will be supported to the standard that you set out? And what do we consider an acceptable minimum timeframe - one year, two, five?

A general observation: it's interesting to see - and it's been apparent from the Website Redesign thread also - the increasingly high standards we aspire to for the way Oolite presents itself to the world.

It all sounds good so far.


One additional thing for (future) automation and tools is standardisation of metadata for each OXP.

Off the top of my head, I think at the very least we'd need, for each OXP:

* Name
* Version
* Date
* Compatible Oolite Version(s)
* Author(s)
* License
* Maintainer(s) (if different from Author)
* Tag(s) (Ship, Scenery, Mission, etc. etc.)
** Others?

Of course, people should be able to list/search based on these fields.


On the domain, what about 'oxps.oolite.org'? Why invent a whole new domain - if it will be the 'official' OXP repository anyway..

Diziet Sma wrote:

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

I really like the stats and controls available with Box.net. I'd LOVE to have the functionality of the central repository. Is there any chance we can get the best of both? The repository's centrality and customization (and hopefully automation, please please please?), and Box.net's stats / feedback?

Cmd. Cheyd, could you elaborate on your request for 'automation' please? What would you like to see automated?

I only have a free box.net account, so the only stats I get are total number of downloads, and a maximum of 1 email notification per day (I think) of a particular file being downloaded. Paid box.net accounts get the following, so far as I can tell..

* Individual downloads broken out by day and time
* IP addresses that download this file
* Names of people when they have Box.net accounts

Is this the level of detail you guys would like? Is there anything else in the way of statistics you can think of that you'd like to see?

Regarding Automation: Some sort of OXP Update notification ("Hey, you're using 'Bill & Ted's Excellent OXP v1.0 - Version 1.2 is available. Would you like to download it?" or "Update all installed OXP's? (Y/N)". Something to make the process of checking all 115 of my installed OXP's for updates a bit less of a chore.

Information for Authors: Yes, that's the stuff I'd like to see. If it could go a step further and (when it knows) WHO downloaded it, that'd be cool but not necessary.

Private "Workspaces" for Collaboration - LOVE THIS IDEA! Half the reason I hang out in the Oolite-Dev channel is to talk with a few people and work on collaborative projects. My section of my FTP server is set up JUST for that purpose as well.

Id settle for a consistent naming convention like MyOXP1.2.oxp so I can easily check manually if there is a new version.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Automatic mass downloader/updater for OXPs:
Something like this ought to be quite feasible with a centralised repository.

...

Update notification:
Many people have commented on how difficult it can be to stay on top of updates to OXPs, particularly when they have a large number installed. I propose to enable people to subscribe to receive automatic notification of updates to any or all OXPs. It would be easy for the repository to also track which OXPs subscribers have downloaded, if they wish, so that they would receive update notices only for the OXPs they have installed.

Very cool.

If you seriously see this through to the end, I will perhaps re-integrate the Oolite Extended Project into "normal" Oolite as an umbrella oxp (containing only the OE-unique stuff) for players who want to play with all the oxps available.

Would save me the work of updating original oxps of others by hand, loads of conflicts and also some oxp authors the "control taken away from me" feeling I obviously produced.

Good that the mass-download & auto-update concepts finally get into the region of a serious attempt at realisation.

Micha wrote:

On the domain, what about 'oxps.oolite.org'? Why invent a whole new domain - if it will be the 'official' OXP repository anyway..

Good!

However, don't subdomains have to be on the same server as the main domain?

no

Cmdr James wrote:

no

Don't you just hate long-winded, wordy answers to a question...

ok, longer version. no, subdomains dont need to be on the same machine. In fact a single domain can be on multiple machines (round robin DNS is a simple example).

Im pretty sure that originally it was intended that the first part of the "domain" was a hostname, so mail.xyz.org and www.xyz.org would point to a physical mail and webserver respectively. Of course this is all obsolete now with virtual servers and stuff like that.

Cmdr James wrote:

ok, longer version. no, subdomains dont need to be on the same machine. In fact a single domain can be on multiple machines (round robin DNS is a simple example).

Im pretty sure that originally it was intended that the first part of the "domain" was a hostname, so mail.xyz.org and www.xyz.org would point to a physical mail and webserver respectively. Of course this is all obsolete now with virtual servers and stuff like that.

Thank-you.