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OXZs on the wiki with versioning

Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 5:07 pm
by maik
I tested the versioning mechanism of the wiki for files and I think it is quite useful for OXZ authors:
After you upload an OXZ, e.g. beercooler.oxz, you can go to its file page on the wiki by prefixing it with "File:", e.g. http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/File:beercooler.oxz.

It looks like the below, except you probably won't see the delete and revert actions:

Image

After uploading the first version, I uploaded two more versions of the file using the "Upload a new version of this file" link at the bottom of the screenshot. I kept the filename the same on all three uploads, so it always remained "beer cooler.oxz", no version information added. As you can see in the screenshot, I described the changes in the comment field. Instead of, or in addition to, doing that I think it would have been better to write the version number of the file there. This would show you the OXP version number directly on this page for each version.

The download URL that the wiki creates remains the same for the most recent version, so once you have an URL from the first upload you can keep on using that same URL and always get the latest version from there.

Older versions get moved to an archive, you can see their download URL when you look at the link of the date/time of the version.

The download counter keeps on counting when you create a new version like this. If you instead create a new version with a new filename (e.g. I would have created beer cooler-1.1.oxz, beer cooler 1.2.oxz etc.) then you would get one download counter per version.

It does make sense to keep multiple versions of an OXZ if you want to maintain separate branches, e.g. for different versions of Oolite, or if you want to track download numbers per version.

I hope that helps (and works with the OXZ manager mechanism)

Re: OXZs on the wiki with versioning

Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 5:56 pm
by Neelix
Interesting, but I think I like the idea of being able to track downloads for each version separately... not that I've actually released the first version of anything yet, but still... :-)

- Neelix

Re: OXZs on the wiki with versioning

Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 6:00 pm
by Norby
I think this is a personal taste. I like the separated counters for each versions of my oxzs, for example if I got about 40 downloads from the last 5 versions in similar timeframes then I can guess that it have 40 stable users, but if the latest got 100 from the total 200 then I see that this one is much more popular than others.

Of course your method is working also, if somebody like the simplicity then can use it.

Re: OXZs on the wiki with versioning

Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 6:12 pm
by Thargoid
Mine are a bit confusing at the moment, as they were uploaded with version numbers originally, but have been updated now with newer versions using the same filename. So even though the file at my end of the upload had a new version name, the one on the wiki still has the old one.

I should probably bite the bullet and upload new versions without version numbers and re-do all the manifests, but there are several files involved now...

Re: OXZs on the wiki with versioning

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 3:45 pm
by maik
Norby wrote:
I think this is a personal taste. I like the separated counters for each versions of my oxzs, for example if I got about 40 downloads from the last 5 versions in similar timeframes then I can guess that it have 40 stable users
Good point, I amended the first post accordingly.
Thargoid wrote:
I should probably bite the bullet and upload new versions without version numbers and re-do all the manifests, but there are several files involved now…
If you need help with creating a sum for your downloads under one filename or want to have older versions deleted while you clean up let me know.