Re: [Boa Constr] Question on opinions...

[Werner F. B. <wer...@fr...>]

On 26/11/2010 10:47, werner wrote:
> This is going a bit OT for this list, hope others won't mind.
>
> I copy the Boa list, so specific stuff for Boa should probably move to
> there.
>
> On 26/11/2010 05:43, Chris Spencer wrote:
>> On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 23:08:57 -0500, C M<cmp...@gm...> wrote:
>>> Chris,
>>> What I'm wondering is: would it be possible to round up a a few
>>> people to help push Boa back into the 10s or whatever this decade is
>>> called? In terms of the controls, maybe we could take a look at what
>>> it is missing, determine the procedure for adding a control in, and
>>> divide the labor amongst a group of people over a period of months. I
>>> don't know how hard this is to do, but if it is a matter of a few
>>> hours per control, I would be willing to try a few if I could. Werner
>>> would probably be able to apprise people of what that entails.
>>>
>>> I'd also like to see an option for toggling Boa's creation of widget
>>> IDs, which I find unnecessary and cluttered (and instead assign them
>>> all -1), and another toggling of providing sizes to widgets if one is
>>> in "sizers mode" (which wouldn't affect you, since you don't use
>>> sizers).
>>>
>>> Beyond that, there are probably a lot of fun newer things that could
>>> be included.
>>> Che
>> First off, can you post a link to your tutorials. I've been using Boa
>> for nearly 10 years now (yeesh, I'm old). But I'm always up for
>> learning new things.
>>
>> Second, without "commit" rights on the Boa Constructor repository,
>> we'd HAVE to fork it in order to be able to distribute it. I'd love
>> to get the maintainer's permission to either fork it or get commit
>> rights to it.
>>
>> I'm also willing to put in a fairly decent amount of work to add
>> controls and do some general "fixing up". I wouldn't mind working
>> with others to accomplish this. I'm in agreement that it is the best
>> GUI designer/IDE out there right now, even in it dilapidated state. It
>> would be nice to shine it up and reintroduce it to the world.
>>
>> We could take this to private email. I also would like to know what
>> Werner thinks, since he's the main contact-man on all things Boa, and
>> has been for quite a few years.
> Having used Boa for the last 7 or 8 years for my shareware I would also
> like to see it "restart".
>
> I'll expand on what I think is needed for a "restart" on the Boa list
> later today.

I think a "restart" needs at a minimum:

- new web site, I would suggest a Sphinx (http://sphinx.pocoo.org/) 
type web site, i.e. an introduction/welcome page with links to the 
documentation which in turn also links to any tutorials and videos etc.

- regular releases, I think it needs one at least once a year better 
would be twice a year.  And this means not certainly lots of new 
features but just officially rolling out any fixes done since the last 
one, including adding in the up to date documentation for Python, 
wxPython etc.

- make it easier for others to contribute (see source code control 
below), document how things are done so maybe others then Riaan can do 
them (e.g. web site, documentation generation, release generation...).

- tutorial on adding a new widget would be really helpful


Source code control

I really believe that CVS is a big problem here, it's support for 
merges/branches etc is not good.  Windows 7 doesn't have a client which 
is officially maintained .......

I use SVN for my own stuff but frankly wasn't impressed with it's merge 
support, also it is supposed to be getting better.  Will know in a 
couple of weeks when I merge my latest stuff back to the trunk.

 From what I read/hear is that Git, Mercurial and Bazaar are doing a 
much better job in allowing to merge and resync with the base, i.e. to 
support distributed development.

Branches would allow a contributor to make his/her changes in an 
isolated way, anyone could test it (without having to merge/patch) and 
when done it should be easy to create a patch and/or merge back to the 
main trunk or future version.


I am sure there is more to it but I have to run for now.

Werner