Celestia development volunteers?

Post #41by **ElChristou** » 14.10.2007, 13:51

selden wrote:ElChristou,

The changes you describe would require a Forum admin to do a lot of "maintenance". Here, that means either Chris L. or myself. Neither of us really has the time to do that.

Beuh... Selden, apart let's say at max half an hour with a pizza and a beer to create a General discussion and a Dev categories, move some forums and create a few more in the Dev category, I don't see what make you say it would be much more maintenance than now... Ok, from time to time locking a thread when a task is done, but indeed is that such a *big* maintenance?

And what prevent Chris to give some permissions to a few more persons? I'm not saying admin but a mod who's job would be to do this maintenance job?

Post #42by **dirkpitt** » 14.10.2007, 15:00

Christophe, are you volunteering to admin? :wink:

Anyway seriously, I like Wikis in principle but Christophe has a point - having yet another communication outlet like a wiki might just be added complication - there's something to be said for keeping everything centralized in the forums.

Post #43by **ElChristou** » 14.10.2007, 15:31

dirkpitt wrote:Christophe, are you volunteering to admin?

If I had more skills in understanding code and a better English, yes, without a doubt... Unfortunately I think I'm far from being the ideal guy for that... :oops:

But really I don't see what would be so harsh to do that... All, we want to see more action, all, we want more comm, we are all logged here several time by week if not by day, so really, really but really, I don't understand well this pseudo lethargy...

yeus · Post #44by **yeus** » 15.10.2007, 22:42

I think the main concern is that developers do not actually want to do the administrative stuff... but only they know what they need..

why don't you just ask someone who wants to contribute something to the project (there are lots of poeple out there i guess) but have no programming skills. They could organize all this stuff...

Least but not least: I am just going to start "experimenting" with celestia because i have tons of ideas, that could be integrated very well with celestia

. But I still would like to know whether its possible somehow to get into the sourceforge-group. You know just to stay "within the project" for example, if someone had a specific task or question i would be in a "reachable distance". I love this project so much... i just want it to stay alife as long as possible

.

greetings, Tom

Post #45by **ElChristou** » 15.10.2007, 22:59

yeus wrote:...But I still would like to know whether its possible somehow to get into the sourceforge-group. You know just to stay "within the project" for example, if someone had a specific task or question i would be in a "reachable distance". I love this project so much... i just want it to stay alife as long as possible .

Tom, I suppose you should first subscribe to the dev mailing list, then by exchanging ideas there and also here and if you prove your skills with some interesting patches, I suppose you will gain easily the official dev status...

Post #46by **t00fri** » 15.10.2007, 23:07

yeus wrote:Least but not least: I am just going to start "experimenting" with celestia because i have tons of ideas, ...
But I still would like to know whether its possible somehow to get into the sourceforge-group.

How about producing some good respective code first and we have a look how it works etc. That sounds kind of normal, doesn't it?

Bye Fridger

Post #47by **chris** » 16.10.2007, 00:03

ElChristou wrote:In fact I got some doubts (I don't know why) about the use of Wikis...

The software development group at my last job used a Wiki, and it proved a very effective way to share information among individual developers. So, I've seen it work very well.

--Chris

Post #48by **chris** » 16.10.2007, 00:12

yeus wrote:I think the main concern is that developers do not actually want to do the administrative stuff... but only they know what they need..

why don't you just ask someone who wants to contribute something to the project (there are lots of poeple out there i guess) but have no programming skills. They could organize all this stuff...

Least but not least: I am just going to start "experimenting" with celestia because i have tons of ideas, that could be integrated very well with celestia . But I still would like to know whether its possible somehow to get into the sourceforge-group. You know just to stay "within the project" for example, if someone had a specific task or question i would be in a "reachable distance". I love this project so much... i just want it to stay alife as long as possible .

greetings, Tom

Tom,

The usual procedure is:

1. Propose a feature here on the development forum
2. Find out if there's interest and make sure that the project you're interested in working on hasn't already been done and isn't already under development by someone else. Hear suggestions from Celestia users about how they'd like to see the feature integrated into Celestia. Experienced Celestia developers might provide some direction on the easiest way to implement the feature.
3. When you've implemented and tested the feature, email the celestia-developers list with the patch so that we can code review it and check it in for you.
4. After a few contributions if you'd like to continue contributing to Celestia, then you can request to be added to the Celestia project on SourceForge so you can make checkins directly.

--Chris

Post #49by **ElChristou** » 16.10.2007, 00:45

chris wrote:
ElChristou wrote:In fact I got some doubts (I don't know why) about the use of Wikis...

The software development group at my last job used a Wiki, and it proved a very effective way to share information among individual developers. So, I've seen it work very well.

--Chris

It's not what I mean, I wasn't talking in general and as your experience show, it work. What I mean is that in our case I wonder if people will take the time to use and visit another place after Sourceforge and the forum... But perhaps I'm too pessimistic...

hank · Post #50by **hank** » 16.10.2007, 17:06

The original purpose of this topic was to solicit volunteers to assist with Celestia development. (Programming skills helpful but not required.)

So far we've heard from: Cham, rthorvald, ElChristou, phoenix, Hungry4info, yeus, Rassilon, BobHegwood

Not a very long list. Anyone else out there willing to help?

- Hank

fungun · Post #51by **fungun** » 16.10.2007, 20:31

No programming here, except vb scripts(I use them in Homeseer Home Automation stuff) But I love to test new things. I am fairly good with graphics also.
Tim

Fenerit · Post #52by **Fenerit** » 16.10.2007, 21:04

I'll give to yours an help whereas I can.

scaddenp · Post #53by **scaddenp** » 17.10.2007, 03:03

Well I am very reluctant to promise help and then find I dont have time. I will try to look at Celestia over Dec-Jan and then decide whether I can commit. C++ (not my favourite language but some experience) and OpenGL - yeah, for some time, though still getting my head around the shader language.

hank · Post #54by **hank** » 20.10.2007, 21:53

So now we've heard from: Cham, rthorvald, ElChristou, phoenix, Hungry4info, yeus, Rassilon, BobHegwood, fungun, Fenerit and scaddenp.

Thanks to everyone who responded. I'm disappointed there weren't more. I guess there just isn't that much interest in a 1.5.0 release of Celestia.

- Hank

Post #55by **ElChristou** » 20.10.2007, 22:54

hank wrote:So now we've heard from: Cham, rthorvald, ElChristou, phoenix, Hungry4info, yeus, Rassilon, BobHegwood, fungun, Fenerit and scaddenp.

Thanks to everyone who responded. I'm disappointed there weren't more. I guess there just isn't that much interest in a 1.5.0 release of Celestia.

- Hank

Hank sorry but this mean nothing.
People can be interested in a new release but cannot or don't want for X reasons to help.
Perso I'm not disappointed at all, this is just the result of the fantastic administration of the project...

yeus · Post #56by **yeus** » 20.10.2007, 23:06

hank wrote:So now we've heard from: Cham, rthorvald, ElChristou, phoenix, Hungry4info, yeus, Rassilon, BobHegwood, fungun, Fenerit and scaddenp.

Thanks to everyone who responded. I'm disappointed there weren't more. I guess there just isn't that much interest in a 1.5.0 release of Celestia.

- Hank

I think the problem is not the users, who want to participate in the developing process... i think its rather a problem of "problem assignement"... as requested before, I hereby request a "sticky"-thread on the forum with the goals/requirements for version 1.5 including a todo-list and what has been done so far...

Someone who has a good overview on the celestia projct should probably do that. I promise you there will very quickly many developers show up and ask if they could help you out in one of those tasks...

You could mark assigend task as *WIP* and finished task as *DONE*

something like this:

TODO-list:

etc-...

you know, this way, developers like me, who are not within the "inner-circle" of the development team, could just take one of the tasks which are not assigned, yet, according to their skills, and start working on it... He would post a message in the thread that he wants to take over the task. The owner of the thread would then mark the task as [WIP], and after some time the developer would provide a patch, which would be reviewed by the "core-team". Depending on the decision of the core team, whether the patch is feasible or not, the task would then be marked as [DONE] or [OPEN] again.

greetings, Tom

hank · Post #57by **hank** » 20.10.2007, 23:12

ElChristou wrote:People can be interested in a new release but cannot or don't want for X reasons to help.

Right. I imagine that many people are interested in having a 1.5.0 release to use, but not interested enough to make any effort themselves to help get it done.

Possibly there are some people who would volunteer if they were shown what they could do to help (testing?) and if it wouldn't take up too much of their time (an hour a week?). If so, I would encourage them to indicate their interest here.

- Hank

Post #58by **ElChristou** » 20.10.2007, 23:13

Yeus, that's the idea of a Dev categorie for specific dev forums I was asking a few days ago... Unfortunatly Chris L. seems to have some better administrative way to do... (just like what we are used to, for example...

)

(Sorry Chris, couldn't resist! :oops:

)

hank · Post #59by **hank** » 20.10.2007, 23:17

yeus wrote:I think the problem is not the users, who want to participate in the developing process... i think its rather a problem of "problem assignement"... as requested before, I hereby request a "sticky"-thread on the forum with the goals/requirements for version 1.5 including a todo-list and what has been done so far...

I think a wiki would be best suited for this. Anyone willing to set one up?

- Hank

Post #60by **ElChristou** » 20.10.2007, 23:19

hank wrote:...Possibly there are some people who would volunteer if they were shown what they could do to help (testing?) and if it wouldn't take up too much of their time (an hour a week?). If so, I would encourage them to indicate their interest here.

Hank, our big problem is our lack of administration. Let's say you get 12 coders tomorrow, I doubt we could do something without the appropriate "frame" for control, testing and feedback.

I'm curious to see the Wiki Chris want to implement and see how this will work... Now I'm also curious about when such Wiki will open...