Authors CurseForge

08:05 < Industrial> I vote for a purge of the svn. anything below toc 20100, anyone not frequently seen on irc (can use ~seen) and addons that do exactly the same (theres enough).
08:06 < Industrial> :>
08:06 < Shadowed> I vote the entire SVN gets purged
08:07 < Shadowed> disable WAU, problem solved
08:07 < Industrial> that too
08:08 < Industrial> that would be cool
08:08 < Industrial> the forums just to discuss your code bits and problems
08:08 < Industrial> (like it USED to be)
08:08 < Industrial> and no hosting \o/
08:08 < Industrial> cept for an Ace3 zip
08:08 < Industrial> hah, that'd be great
08:08 < Shadowed> purge the forums while you're at it
08:09 < Industrial> and isntall punbb
08:09 < Industrial> >_>
08:09 < Industrial> Tekkub: Shadowed and I fixed the wowace problem
08:09 < Shadowed> good luck getting it implemented

Wouldnt that be the best? to have wowace back to where it was before all the fanboism? Read my first posts here, they are too cute.

Why does your IRC client put a space after < but not before >

Quote from Shadowed »

Why does your IRC client put a space after < but not before >

Probably because of usermodes, so users without ops or voice are just " " :P

I like the idea of purging a lot of the crap there, as well as requiring the persons to atleast visit irc sometimes :(

I agree for a purge.
All addons not updated since 20100, no longer working and/or totally outdated (Ace1 addons) should be tagged, then removed from trunk/branches.
I really have no idea on how parsing 1200+ folders with wau can have impact on server performances, but it may do a little something :)

I wont come in the last point discution, wau disabling, as i'm totally against this :p

[X] Purge/cleanup SVN
[] Disable WAU

What's the sense of disabling WAU? People can still pull all addons via TortoiseSVN and update them 100 times a day. WAU is just more comfortable.

I'm a newcomer here so my opinion doesn't have such value as of wowace elders... I just want to give you my idea of wowace future. Sorry for a long post, but I think it solves almost all the current problems known to me

After being here and using wowace for about a month I see these problems:
1) Development is done on a trunk which is also used for end-user distribution - sometimes bugs appear in the middle of development affecting the users
2) WAU needs to download around 2MB of addon list XMLs on every update. TTL of the list is only 10minutes
3) There are many outdated addons not maintained anymore
4) There are many similar addons doing almost the same
5) Some authors doesn't test their addons before releasing for externals and such

As a user I'd like to see WAU to continue, because:
1) It's easy to use
2) There are many addons to choose from
3) It just worksTM ;) - other updaters need to be set up before use and many release sites change their layout from time to time breaking the update process

My idea for future of wowace is not complete SVN purge and WAU lockdown - this would just hurt the community. I see wowace as a business potential. I suggest:
1) create second addon source (another SVN/ branch/ ...) just for releases. Selected updated addons will be automatically moved here after a while after last commit
2) move the WAU to use release source which will solve 1) and 5) and probably 2), 3) and 4) because of manual addon selection
3) WAU will still be able to use current addon source to support developers and their need to update addons to latest version
4) Development will continue on current SVN

What will be needed for such change:
1) almost all supporting technology is already created. Only the "move from trunk to release" tool will have to be written.
2) Change the files.wowace.com script to create packages based on the release source and not SVN trunk
3) (optional) Support in WAU to choose between (deafult) release addons and trunk addons

wowace after the change from user perspective:
1) Cleaner and faster addon list (because of addon selection)
2) Addons are more stable because users won't be served addons with stupid bugs (syntax errors, externals problems, ...) which are quickly fixed on trunk before moving to release

wowace after the change from developer perspective:
1) Development for Live version of wow is done on trunk as today (these addons are alpha quality)
2) Development for PTR is done in branches as today (these addons are pre-alpha quality)
3) After a while of stable addon version (no commit in X hours) the addon is moved from trunk to release for the users (these addons are beta quality)
4) Addon is released on other release sites by the addon author (these addons are release quality)

Problems that can occur:
1) Some addon fixes should be able to bypass the commit timeout and go to release immediately if some major bug is found after the release
2) Selection of addons can be tricky because it can cause tension between developers when they found their addon is not selected (same problem in addon purging)
3) Some users may feel that using the trunk versions is better because:
a) it's more cool to have latest version
b) addon they use is not selected to go to release

Quote from Pastamancer »

The xml file compresses nicely and WAU/your browser should be negotiating gzip encoding to get it compressed over-the-wire.

I remember times when it downloaded about 300kb of gziped XML, but it doesn't work anymore (at least for me :()

Quote from Pastamancer »

I could bump up the minimum interface version though.

As posted in another thread there are functioning addons with old Interface 20100. EnhancedColourPicker is one of them. There is no reason to block it from WAU.

Proper solution would be to update Interface number in TOC for all such addons, but it will be daunting task and without the addon author or source code analysis we can miss some problem that can occur in newer WoW versions.

Here's a solution (yes, I'd like to work towards a solution too) for the stable releases;

1. Have a general format for the /tags SVN directory (which it doesn't have right now) for example;

/tags/MyLittleAddon/1.0-20400/MyLittleAddon.toc

This is easy because you immediately see what version of wow the addon version was meant to work with.

2. Have the zip script generate a zip of a tag when the tag is made.

3. Have WAU and files.wowace support only those stable releases, and advocate addon downloads for use only by means of files.wowace or WAU. The SVN would still be accessible for everyone, but if your shit breaks then its not our fault. On the other hand we as devs should _guarantee_ stable code in /tags.
3.1. Have WAU and files.wowace support filtering by TOC version, filtering out everything that is not released for the current TOC version by default. This encourages addon authors to update their addons for new patches.
3.2. It would be nice for WAU as the Official(tm) updater suppored by wowace (which it is, right?) to work on multiple platforms, including *nix and mac, or rather not have anything to do with .NET - cuz I dont want none o dat mumbo jumbo on my PC :P Python anyone?

Does WAU have a Linux client? I'm using WUU because it does have a Linux client

I think an API should be offered rather than forcing WAU on everyone. Other addon updaters exist, for various reasons.

Quote from Industrial »

1. Have a general format for the /tags SVN directory (which it doesn't have right now) for example;

/tags/MyLittleAddon/1.0-20400/MyLittleAddon.toc

This is easy because you immediately see what version of wow the addon version was meant to work with.

Aye, I do something similar with mine:
2.3.3.10-Beta

The biggest diff? I don't use the TOC number, but instead the version of WoW I last ran the addon on... they don't bump the TOC for ever minor patch.