Irrlicht CVS Petition

tchilrri · Post by **tchilrri** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 6:22 am

I have a 56K modem and it's very bad too always download the whole Irrlicht stuff again with every new version.
I just want to have the difference! Even when I miss to download a version and e.g. switch from 0.25 to 0.27.

That is why I vote for CVS!

Endar · Post by **Endar** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 7:22 am

@tchilrri:
How long would it take you to download a new version of Irrlicht? A couple of hours? (2-4) I would think that spending 2-4 hours every couple of months to get a new version of irrlicht is a good trade.

thesmileman · Post by **thesmileman** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 7:25 am

Endar wrote:@tchilrri:
How long would it take you to download a new version of Irrlicht? A couple of hours? (2-4) I would think that spending 2-4 hours every couple of months to get a new version of irrlicht is a good trade.

I agree. I was going to post the same thing but then decided against it. But seriously is the download really that big leave it on at night and go to sleep

Electron · Post by **Electron** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 12:55 pm

I'm glad niko replied. This thread was starting to scare me. I think that it is a good idea to have a specific place for bugfixes and addons. However, this CVS thing seperate from the main page worries me a bit. A potential problems I see.
I find it unlikely that everyone in the irrlicht community who finds a bug or makes an addon will go to the new CVS site, thus we may still have addons and bugfixes scattered around the forums as we do now and everyone still unsure if there might be some nifty feature lurking somewhere that someone's already implemented.

Personally I think I would prefer if a new forum were added to the existing forum index. Everyone who has an addon to post would be expected to post it there. One thread for each addon, no starting threads if you don't have an addon. People could then browse this forum fairly quickly (hopefully everyone will give their addons descriptive titles) to look for addons they would find useful. I hope that this would also help prevent multiple people working seperately on essentially the same thing. Niko too could look through this forum to see if he thinks any of it worth adding to the official engine

There already is a forum for bugfixes which should serve fine, should people like to make corrections before niko's next version

Others may feel differently, but for myself if I'm using an irrlicht with features other than what niko has implemented (and I do) I like to have written in (or copied and pasted from other's code) every line myself so I know exactly what I'm putting into the engine. I don't mean to slight the skill of whoever's maintaining the CVS version, I'm sure they do a fine job, I jsut like to know exactly what extra stuff I'm putting in.
BTW: I generally enclose all new code I add between
//added by JAMES (James is my name)
and
//end added by JAMES
so if I ever have any doubt later I can know what is and what is not niko's code

just my lengthy $0.02

Electron · Post by **Electron** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 1:00 pm

oh sorry about the double post and one other thing
I've got a lousy 56K too and I don't find downloading irrlicht at all bad, thoguh if niko put the examples in a seperate download it would be a bit easier.
For comparison, try downloading Ogre on a 56K(which I have done), that thing's over 30MB compared to irrlciht's 10MB

mm765 · Post by **mm765** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 1:18 pm

Electron wrote:I'm glad niko replied. This thread was starting to scare me. I think that it is a good idea to have a specific place for bugfixes and addons. However, this CVS thing seperate from the main page worries me a bit. A potential problems I see.
I find it unlikely that everyone in the irrlicht community who finds a bug or makes an addon will go to the new CVS site, thus we may still have addons and bugfixes scattered around the forums as we do now and everyone still unsure if there might be some nifty feature lurking somewhere that someone's already implemented.

Personally I think I would prefer if a new forum were added to the existing forum index. Everyone who has an addon to post would be expected to post it there. One thread for each addon, no starting threads if you don't have an addon. People could then browse this forum fairly quickly (hopefully everyone will give their addons descriptive titles) to look for addons they would find useful. I hope that this would also help prevent multiple people working seperately on essentially the same thing. Niko too could look through this forum to see if he thinks any of it worth adding to the official engine

There already is a forum for bugfixes which should serve fine, should people like to make corrections before niko's next version

Others may feel differently, but for myself if I'm using an irrlicht with features other than what niko has implemented (and I do) I like to have written in (or copied and pasted from other's code) every line myself so I know exactly what I'm putting into the engine. I don't mean to slight the skill of whoever's maintaining the CVS version, I'm sure they do a fine job, I jsut like to know exactly what extra stuff I'm putting in.
BTW: I generally enclose all new code I add between
//added by JAMES (James is my name)
and
//end added by JAMES
so if I ever have any doubt later I can know what is and what is not niko's code

just my lengthy $0.02

the problem in general is not getting the information about which fixes/addons exist but to know if they will be included in the next version.
to the // added by james stuff: use diff, its much easier and you can keep your own patches so you can apply it to new versions, when they come out..

atcdevil · Post by **atcdevil** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 2:15 am

I'm still only partially convinced by the arguments against the CVS server. I agree one that has the latest features on it would be troublesome. But what about one that ONLY has bug fixes, no new buggy features. I'm not only asking saigumi this, but I'm using what he said to explain what I'm not convinced about:

saigumi wrote: 3. There are enough bug submissions and "why isn't X working" comming from the current releases. Since the engine is changing dramatically still, people pulling from yesterday. Trying to pull teeth to get someone to say that they were using a CVS pull instead of a point release build when they encounter a bug can be very aggrivating.

Why not ignore them if they don't specify that they're using the latest version, or just say "make sure you have the latest version" until they do. I think it's much more aggravating to have to find bugs that have already been found by others. It's unreasonable to expect every single Irrlicht user to apply every single bug fix, when it could easily be done by one person. And it's ridiculous for someone to have to waste days of development trying to figure out what's going wrong, when someone else has already solved that issue.

I've had situations myself where a half month after I fix a bug, I still get reports of it, which I thought the current CVS version had fixed. After debugging for a few days and trying to figure out where the "new" bug is at, the person says "Oh, I pulled this from CVS three weeks ago and I just pulled again and it works."

I'm not as experienced an Irrlicht user as you... but consider this hypothetical yet realistic scenario.

I've had situations myself where I've ran into an unexplainable memory leak/random crash/undesired performance. Since there's no CVS server with the most up to date fixes I can't download all of the bug fixes that have been made since 4.5 months ago March 9th. After debugging my complex application for a day or two I pinpoint the bug. Now knowing where the problem is I can look through the Bug Reports forum to see if it has already been fixed. Lo and behold Saigumi made the same fix back on March 10th. A day of precious development time has been wasted, and it could have been saved with a simple "cvs update irrlicht".

How do you avoid this situation without needing to manually apply every bug fix that comes out?

Electron · Post by **Electron** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 12:38 pm

@atcdevil
I think I actually agree with you. I'm leary of using a version with features not in niko's official release that may not be clearly marked as addons. Bugfixes on the other hand are a different matter. If whoever is making the bugfixes on the CVS reads everything in the bugfixes forum every day then it should turn out nicely.

@mm765
I'm not sure if I totally follow you

the problem in general is not getting the information about which fixes/addons exist but to know if they will be included in the next version.

I disagree here. Addons are scattered around the forums and I doubt most people really know about most of them. Perhaps if I have time I'll make a single thread in the FAQ forum with links to all addons that I can find. As to knowing if they'll be included in the next version, I don't find that as much of a problem as you do. If I know about an addon and I need it I'll add it to my version of irrlicht. If I knwo about it and I don't need it I'll leave it alone. To me whether or not it will be in the next version is fairly irrelevent. I'll use it based on my need.

to the // added by james stuff: use diff, its much easier and you can keep your own patches so you can apply it to new versions, when they come out..

I don't quite follow you here, I think because I have about zip knowledge of CVS and what exactly it does. I will admit that my method would be time consuming when applying all my changes to a new version, but at least I know which is the changes code. I do not know of any way to apply patches with typing in the code again (or copy + paste rather), but perhaps I should go do my homework on CVS

cochi · Post by **cochi** » Sun Aug 08, 2004 12:42 pm

There he has his fork (IrrlichtNX)... Now i guess most are happy?

There've been smaller forks in last year but i guess this one's gonna be different

Cya