Warsow on Github

I was looking at the code of Warsow yesterday and I thought to myself "I'd better turn this into a git repo so I can track my changes". The subsequent thought was "Hey, maybe I'll just clone the repo from Github, that'll be easier", but this is where I noticed that while there are a couple of warsow-related repos, warsow itself isn't hosted there.

Since it would look really weird if I (a non-member of the development team) hosted the code and then had people forking my repo, wouldn't it be nice if one of the devs made a Github account and hosted it?

We have been using SVN from day X so we would have a project there alone to convert to Git.
Also the development of Warsow is closed. We would not gain much from having the code in Git.

In fact it would be somewhat tedious cause we would be forced to maintain a public and private forks and then we would need to have the hassle of merging patches and revisions from one fork from another and we are not interested in that.

Also we have been very careful about the code quality and we don't accept patches without a notice, which is a burdeon, yes, but necessary for keeping the code quality somewhat high. We are afraid of influx of mediocre and bad patches and discussions about why patches aren't accepted.

We comply to GPL by releasing the source code of every release, it is not mandatory to keep the development itself open.

We've talked about archiving release sources there, but so far we haven't had time to concentrate on it.
(updated 2012-08-22 16:54:00)

We have been using SVN from day X so we would have a project there alone to convert to Git.
Also the development of Warsow is closed. We would not gain much from having the code in Git.

I don't think this is what he's suggesting. Just about archiving our release sources there.

crizis wrote:

We have been using SVN from day X so we would have a project there alone to convert to Git.
Also the development of Warsow is closed. We would not gain much from having the code in Git.

I don't think this is what he's suggesting. Just about archiving our release sources there.

Yes that's sorta what i meant with having to keep public and private forks. Except that our private fork wouldn't be in Git but remain in SVN.

First of all, Github has had SVN for some time now. I haven't personally used the interface, since I generally work with git, but I've heard that it works well.

Here's their announcement of their support, an update, how you import and git+svn usage.

As for the closed nature of your development and how it would work with a public repo, I can't say.
I do know however that git itself makes the process of branching and merging a straightforward process, and Github makes the discussion around this process easier still.
You mention that code quality is a high priority. Suppose that a repo is put up and that someone forks it, changes some stuff and makes a pull request. The pull request can then be dissected, commented down to the very lines. Would you have objections to the standard of the code, you'd say why and then go from there (closing, modifying in a new branch, etc.).

I understand the concern about the possibility of ranting back and forth about why "foo" was accepted and "bar" wasn't, but if the reasons for rejection are valid then the discussion is a part of the repo for everyone to learn from.

That's the way I'd envision it working, at least, should you host Warsow on Github.

I started the thread with a rather naive assumption that since the source is provided, there's also a public repo somewhere that I've just missed or didn't know about. Now that you mentioned that the development is in fact closed, I guess a full blown move to open development over on Github isn't exactly something that's going to happen (understandably), but at least hosting the releases there would be something nice.
(updated 2012-08-22 18:07:48)

linduxed wrote:
First of all, Github has had SVN for some time now. I haven't personally used the interface, since I generally work with git, but I've heard that it works well.

Yes we are aware of Git <-> SVN utilities, but IMO using that as a tool-chain seems tedious.

We have nothing against Git, we have experience on it and in fact I myself would choose Git over SVN any day. But getting our angry Russian main developer to switch to Git has been hard and we haven't yet succeeded in that task.

You mention that code quality is a high priority. Suppose that a repo is put up and that someone forks it, changes some stuff and makes a pull request. The pull request can then be dissected, commented down to the very lines. Would you have objections to the standard of the code, you'd say why and then go from there (closing, modifying in a new branch, etc.).

We've had code done by people on the team and we've had patches that we ended up having to rewrite mostly and it's usually a give-or-take situation where you either spend the time making a feature yourself or you spend the time to fix someone else's implementation. Our resources aren't that high that we would be able to review these patches, most of the time we have to rely on blind trust towards community and the reputation of the author of patch.

What I'm saying is that we don't really have an infrastructure nor will to create one at this moment anymore that will allow this kind of semi-open development.
Way we have been doing so far is to grab some interesting implementations and bring them to the game itself (Also regarding artwork and other aspects of the product), without any original notion of having it implemented officially in to the product.

I don't mean to sound old-fashioned or anti-FOSS when in fact I do promote FOSS and new infrastructures and organization-models in software development.
We can conclude this by saying that we have thought of this and we will keep thinking about this and if nothing else, then at very least we can push official release source codes to Github which people are then free to fork and mess with.

But getting our angry Russian main developer to switch to Git has been hard and we haven't yet succeeded in that task.

I don't have anything against git myself (in fact I use it at work). All I said was that I cba to upgrade the buildbot and our cross compilation toolchain to use git.

toukkapoukka wrote:
We have been using SVN from day X so we would have a project there alone to convert to Git.
Also the development of Warsow is closed. We would not gain much from having the code in Git.

we would be forced to maintain a public and private forks and then we would need to have the hassle of merging patches and revisions from one fork from another and we are not interested in that.

toukkapoukka wrote:

Also we have been very careful about the code quality and we don't accept patches without a notice, which is a burdeon, yes, but necessary for keeping the code quality somewhat high. We are afraid of influx of mediocre and bad patches and discussions about why patches aren't accepted.

if thats the reason to keep development closed, having public patches on another tracker would be a plus imho. getting patches is a good thing, hopefully, and git should make it easy enough to create .diff files to apply in svn. even if the repo was online, you wouldnt be forced to even read patches.
I expect it would go slow. so not that much more work as you make it seem. if good patches come in, i'd think that the hassle is justified. i'd rather see warsow getting fixes than buggy features, especially since you wanna concentrate on bugfixing now after 1.0.
anyway, the main argument for public repo is, it wouldnt only be hidden in a zip, but also easy to reference online. in any other regard it wouldnt do more than changing the platform from this forum to a more suitable format. maybe crizis wants to write a fitting web client for git first. :P

Well, as I said to crizis yesterday on #warsow, with your development process being closed, I'd say that the main purpose of hosting something like the release versions on Github would be making it easier to start hacking away.

So simplifying participation, rather than changing your development process drastically.

toukkapoukka wrote:

We can conclude this by saying that we have thought of this and we will keep thinking about this and if nothing else, then at very least we can push official release source codes to Github which people are then free to fork and mess with.

Nice to hear, looking forward to it!

toukkapoukka wrote:
But getting our angry Russian main developer to switch to Git has been hard and we haven't yet succeeded in that task.

And you are lucky I'm not still there cause I do dislike Git ;)
(updated 2012-08-23 22:35:43)

jal wrote:

toukkapoukka wrote:
But getting our angry Russian main developer to switch to Git has been hard and we haven't yet succeeded in that task.

And you are lucky I'm not still there cause I do dislike Git ;)

i think they would be happy staying with svn if that meant you working on wsw again ;)

Everyone would :D

...except perhaps jal himself :(

seems warsow does have a github already :)
but why even github, because it's what the cool kids use today?

We've talked about archiving release sources there, but so far we haven't had time to concentrate on it.

archiving the sdks would sure be convenient, but not much more convenient or exhausting than extracting the sdks to an ftp folder. the fact you have to concentrate on that, gives me the slight hope you might consider to go full blown open development.
(updated 2012-08-25 03:06:16)