I know this might be a bit off topic but I couldn't find a better place to post this.
I am very sad to announce that the .NET language bindings for Irrlicht have reached a dead end. To be more precise I am talking about the Irrlicht.NET CP wrapper.http://irrlichtnetcp.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/index.php
There are no more contributors on board and the one and only svn admin Lester stopped maintaining the wrapper as well. The latest release is Irrlicht 1.3 based.
Lester asked me or anyone else willing to take over further development to give him SVN access. Honestly I don't think I am up to this task. There is whole bunch of wrapper users but they are missing the C++ background so little hope is left that someone inside the community could take this over.
I am therefore asking if anyone of the main Irrlicht group contributors or the whole dev team is willing to participate in the .NET wrapper?
IMHO there is not so much to do since the wrapper is in a pretty good shape, its just the new Irrlicht changes that needs to be implemented like the Material changes etc.
HELP the Irrlicht Wrapper for .NET
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rogerborg
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That's a shame. I'd have thought with the number of people asking about this that some of them would have seen the pragmatic benefits of contributing to it.
Question: if there's nobody in the C# community who are able to update the wrappers, who would validate the work if a C++ person did it?
Question: if there's nobody in the C# community who are able to update the wrappers, who would validate the work if a C++ person did it?
Please upload candidate patches to the tracker.
Need help now? IRC to #irrlicht on irc.freenode.net
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Need help now? IRC to #irrlicht on irc.freenode.net
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
This is a rhetoric question isn't it? 
Anyway who am I to blame anybody? I can only present here my personal opinion which must not even be the truth. So, in my opinion the wrappers development was a bit odd organized. No one except the admin had SVN write access, as the time went on the folks there more or less became just wrapper users. I also think that the Irrlicht contributors influenced the current situation by abandoning the Irrlicht.NET wrapper (which was a correct decision) and letting the Irrlicht.NET CP wrapper do on its own without ever checking where it is going, how it is coming along etc. By "checking" I don't mean controlling but something more in the sense of communicating and maybe discussing the roadmap and what it means for a wrapper (just take a look at OGRE/MOGRE development - OGRE did a lot intrinsic changes to enable easy .NET binding).
But all this is not going to help. The real question is are the other language bindings something valuable for Irrlicht or not?
Personally again I think they are. I did help as much as I could, but mostly by writing tutorials & code examples and posting answers in the help forum. Neither my free time nor my wrapping know how would allow me to take over the maintenance but I would feel very sorry if the wrapper just dies.
I think the right thing would be that the main contributors at least take over the svn & forum access so the wrapper might be continued once manpower and interest reach the critical mass. I could organize that with Lester...
Cheers
Anyway who am I to blame anybody? I can only present here my personal opinion which must not even be the truth. So, in my opinion the wrappers development was a bit odd organized. No one except the admin had SVN write access, as the time went on the folks there more or less became just wrapper users. I also think that the Irrlicht contributors influenced the current situation by abandoning the Irrlicht.NET wrapper (which was a correct decision) and letting the Irrlicht.NET CP wrapper do on its own without ever checking where it is going, how it is coming along etc. By "checking" I don't mean controlling but something more in the sense of communicating and maybe discussing the roadmap and what it means for a wrapper (just take a look at OGRE/MOGRE development - OGRE did a lot intrinsic changes to enable easy .NET binding).
But all this is not going to help. The real question is are the other language bindings something valuable for Irrlicht or not?
Personally again I think they are. I did help as much as I could, but mostly by writing tutorials & code examples and posting answers in the help forum. Neither my free time nor my wrapping know how would allow me to take over the maintenance but I would feel very sorry if the wrapper just dies.
I think the right thing would be that the main contributors at least take over the svn & forum access so the wrapper might be continued once manpower and interest reach the critical mass. I could organize that with Lester...
Cheers
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KeldorKatarn
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Well, we did chat to Lester and another one of the devs whenever they popped into the chat room, but as you said there aren't enough developers or time on either side.
The main problem here is that no Irrlicht devs actually use Irrlicht.Net, I think Niko is the only one who has ever used .Net at all. I don't think we can take over the project because we're not .Net guys (aside from Niko, who didn't have the time to complete the official wrapper, which actually caused Irrlicht.Net Cross Platform to be born), but we're more than happy provide support and listen to feedback.
Is there any other way we can help?
The main problem here is that no Irrlicht devs actually use Irrlicht.Net, I think Niko is the only one who has ever used .Net at all. I don't think we can take over the project because we're not .Net guys (aside from Niko, who didn't have the time to complete the official wrapper, which actually caused Irrlicht.Net Cross Platform to be born), but we're more than happy provide support and listen to feedback.
Is there any other way we can help?