[PD-dev] svn:externals, pd-extended, SVN and the goal of it all

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Jun 21, 2008, at 1:26 PM, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Hallo,
> Hans-Christoph Steiner hat gesagt: // Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>
>> I think then there could be a simple distro system like Eclipse has
>> for managing plugins. (Basically, there is a simple format for
>> posting a library to a website.  The user then adds the repo URL to
>> the program, which then has a browser for all available installation
>> options and updates).
>
> Recently another metaphor came to my mind - and of course it has to be
> taken with a grain of salt like all metaphors: Mozilla vs.
> Firefox/Thunderbird/Sundbird, ...
>
> pd-extended to me very much feels like Mozilla in that it tries to
> provide as much "apps" as possible crammed into a single-click
> installable suite. Compare that to Firefox, which is only a very basic
> browser with functionality stripped down so much, that the first thing
> everyone does is install some extenstions. Nevertheless Firefox took
> off in a big way and Mozilla is more or less dead.
>
> I think, this had two reasons. First reason: People who liked the
> browser in Mozilla didn't care about the mail component at that time.
> They used Mutt, Outlook, or whatever.  (Funnily now that it's a
> separate app, Thunderbird became popular as well.) The second reason
> is the extensions and theme system of Firefox which made it very easy
> to install only the updates, that a user is interested in, without all
> the bloat of Mozilla.
>
> I don't know if something can be learned from that history, though.

I think it is a good example.  Mozilla needed to happen in order to  
make Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. happen.  But it then worked better to  
split them up.  I think Pd-extended is a similar kind of thing.   
Gathering all known code at the time into one place need to happen to  
get the community to the next step.  Now we are outgrowing that  
model, so I think it is time to split things up so that externals are  
as well supported as internals.

Then there is much less need for a 'gatekeeper', who has control over  
what is included (e.g. like Miller for vanilla, or me, mostly, for Pd- 
extended).  If we make it easy to find, download, and manage  
externals, then we don't need a big central package.  Something like  
CPAN is a great example, or the Eclipse plugins.

.hc


>
> Ciao
> -- 
>  Frank Barknecht                                     _  
> ______footils.org__
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pd-dev mailing list
> Pd-dev at iem.at
> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-dev



------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----

Using ReBirth is like trying to play an 808 with a long stick.    - 
David Zicarelli