[sldev] Webkit versus Second Life

[Vector Hastings]

I would quibble with what seems to me to be the overly harsh and
single-minded assessment of

"A new developer has NO value unless he has an overview of the process,
the components involved and how everything hangs together."

So you must understand how photons are released during the excitation of
atoms before using an optical mouse?

To get personal for a moment...

I'm an example of someone who has a non-development need to delve into the
opensource end of SL. I'm making a machinima that demands some features that
really aren't available as-is and probably won't ever become stuff you'll
find on the advanced menu. The fact that SL is OpenSource is part of why I
felt comfortable choosing SL as this platform, because I knew if we ran into
these kinds of needs, solutions would be possible.

And I share the feeling Obscuro mentions of being a little fish at this
table, since I never learned C++ and becoming expert at is isn't on my
priority list. But at the same time I'd defend what we're doing as valuable
even if we only find bugs in the software that's coming down the pipe.

Part of the 'open' in OpenSource is to invite a larger tent and make us all
feel welcome.

Which includes encouraging people to get up and running as quickly as
possible. So I salute what Soft is trying to achieve.


That said, I concur with the general point that the automation machine can
become part of the problem in getting started when it goes off the rails.
The develop.py script we have today is an example that has often left me
stuck with no real idea of why.



I know when I first set up my environment, I think the biggest hill to climb
was sorting through the competing documentations, because that was when 1.20
was giving way to 1.21 and Cmake, so I was mixing up my instructions between
the two. After that, it was develop.py script errors, and after that hunting
down the third party libraries (because again, that meant tackling different
documentation at each provider).



Hope that's helpful.

Vector



-----Original Message-----
From: sldev-bounces at lists.secondlife.com
[mailto:sldev-bounces at lists.secondlife.com]On Behalf Of Carlo Wood
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 8:52 AM
To: Soft
Cc: sldev
Subject: Re: [sldev] Webkit versus Second Life


On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 08:14:28AM -0500, Soft wrote:
> Watching an Apple Safari/Webkit developer intro talk, they did
> something pretty cool: They demonstrated that you can fetch and build
> Webkit using nothing but your mouse. They assume you have the
> developer tools and subversion installed. The rest is su-and-say
> enough that you can just copy and paste three lines from the browser.
> One to do the svn fetch, one to build, and one to launch the built
> app.

That is bullshit; each pasted command can start a plethora of other
commands. I could write a script that downloads, build, installs
AND starts SecondLife - including all shared libraries if you
wish and call it "we_are_so_cool". Then you "beat" Apple Safari/Webkit:
just ONE line to paste!

> We're pretty far away from that. We rely on a handful of libraries
> that we can't provide on our own. We need some extra development tools
> installed. We have library and artwork bundles apart from the source
> bundle. We have separate steps for configuring and for building.

I consider most of that a plus! Having a "black box" means less
flexibility and ONLY works in a FULLY (version) controlled environment.
Microsoft and Apple already (attempt to) do that (and still fail
often -- except during a presentation). Linux has chosen
a different path. I strongly believe that a non-black box, and
flexibility is worth more than a "one click" process that either
works or not (that being said, I AM author of a few auto-magic
scripts like http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/howto/build-nvidia-kernel
and http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/vvinstall2
Look at those scripts to have an idea how "cool/good" one-click
installations are... Do you really want this? Nevertheless, I wrote
those for end-users that otherwise would simply have nothing at all.
Developers should be able to understand each step. The more steps
the better. What we NEED is a HOWTO that explains every step in
detail (and thus, many copy&paste lines). Most of my HOWTO's are
that way, look for example at
http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/howto/encode.html
or http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/svn/index.html with many
little copy&paste blocks instead of one-script-fits-all.

> An awful lot of new devs get lost somewhere in the process.
>
> Of all the above, if we were going to focus on knocking out just one
> step next, which do you think would be most valuable? Which is the
> highest hurdle?

A new developer has NO value unless he has an overview of the process,
the components involved and how everything hangs together.
New developers need to learn a lot of things. The best way to
learn is by doing. Changing a whole install/compile step to
a one-click won't make them any wiser and they will be of no
value imho.

Nevertheless-- I can answer your question ;). The answer is
*precisely* what the Open Metaverse Viewer project's goal is:
* Only use opensource components and to remove any non-free dependencies.

Your next step should be get rid of any closed source third-party
libraries/software. Then we need a webpage that outlines each
step for new developers to follow, rather than one powerful
script. We (OMV developers) ran into this too, so you can have
a look at our first attempts to outline things that need to be
done on http://omvviewer.byteme.org.uk/source.shtml
(courtesy Robin Cornelius) and in more detail
http://omvviewer.byteme.org.uk/git.shtml

> Another cool thing they do is making sure the nightly builds are
> completely stand-alone. Testing a build is as simple as unpacking a
> zip file and running a file in the contents - no installers permitted,
> no writing to files outside that directory. The idea is that it's
> possible to keep an array of nightlies and binary chop through
> versions to find regressions. Mac and Linux are pretty much at this
> stage. Would this be preferable for Windows BSI nightlies?

--
Carlo Wood <carlo at alinoe.com>
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