32 replies to this topic

[pscEx]

A topic with the same main title exists in the Projects forum.

There currently are 62 posts.

But besides of a few exceptions all of the posts are either by Arvy or by me.

Question:

Here are several developers using a server for distribuitng their projects

• Everything ok now?
• No interest on a better organisation?
• No time to respond?
• ...?
• Am I the only one who is interested in a good download system?

Arvy's question:

It sure would be nice to hear from them. We won't bite you in here, you know. And your suggestions, criticisms, whatever would be very welcome. Peter shouldn't have everything his own way exclusively.

seems to be either overseen or neglected.

@All

Wake up!

BTW: ALL means really ALL. See here.

Peter

[Galapo]

Been a bit difficult for me to have time to test and respond to this. (My sister's week old baby had to have open-heart surgery and there was massive complications. Means also that I may not be around as much for a while.)

Question: what is wrong with the download system currently?

Thanks,
Galapo.

[MedEvil]

Had a short look into the first post of that thread.
Could only see work and no advantage. So i ignored it.



@Galapo
Sorry to hear that. All my best wishes for the little one!

[Brito]

I'm still waiting for the 3-D animation testings to begin..

No, seriously - At the moment I read up your talks with Arvy and they relate to the stability and features from a project maintainer perspective and I'm sure that by the time that you're happy with the end result - all the possible features that most project maintainers wish/dream to use will be well implemented.

As my time to help with testings is also short, my main concern is the perspective from a visitor angle which I hope to discuss once the uploading/updating features discussion is concluded.

We now have a good tool to upload and administer updates.ini and I would also like to see a good replacement to the index.html file produced by wb in a near future.


---

Galapo, please extend my best regards to your familly on this difficult time and my I hope that your recent-born nephew makes a full recovery quickly.

[Galapo]

Thanks indeed for your concerns!

It's actually not looking good at the moment. It seems he will live, but a very high probability of brain damage. Which is better, though, than a day ago when it was thought he would be paralysed as well.

Anyway, sorry for being off topic in a thread about "Server Site Management".

Regards,
Galapo.

[Arvy]

Question: what is wrong with the download system currently?

Nothing so far as I'm concerned. I thought I was being asked to provide a PHP tool primarily for convenient multi-contributor site maintenance (uploading and .INI file updating) and that's what I've tried to do.

Best wishes for the little one's recovery and future good health.

Had a short look into the first post of that thread.
Could only see work and no advantage. So i ignored it.

While I can certainly understand reluctance to give a negative response, I would actually appreciate knowing the full extent of your view and that of other potential users who may (or may not) share it. Wasting time, whether my own or others', isn't my favourite hobby. As I said in my original posting: 'A good dose of constructive criticism could, I think, be quite useful to all concerned at this point. Or even some frank and honest "don't bother about it" feedback, for that matter.'

We now have a good tool to upload and administer updates.ini and I would also like to see a good replacement to the index.html file produced by wb in a near future.

Persistent, aren't you? I can't help wondering, however, whether it's a wish and enthusiasm that is widely shared. If so, it's certainly not obvious to me. While I enjoy helping people when I can, I'm even less keen about wasting time on "decorations" (3-D or otherwise) than I am about wasting time on things that might have some practical usefulness but are actually unwanted by the potential users.

[MedEvil]

While I can certainly understand reluctance to give a negative response, I would actually appreciate knowing the full extent of your view and that of other potential users who may (or may not) share it. Wasting time, whether my own or others', isn't my favourite hobby. As I said in my original posting: 'A good dose of constructive criticism could, I think, be quite useful to all concerned at this point. Or even some frank and honest "don't bother about it" feedback, for that matter.'

My problem is mostly that i can see no advantages for me to spend time to set it up or even just have it.
- I still need to be on my main machine to make an upload, because i still need to create the index.html and the ini.
- I still need to have a perfect replica on my system, cause i need to create index.html and the ini localy.
- People can already download individual files, through index.html or WB.
- Upload is also no improvement imo, I just start my FTP client and it automaticly connects, synchronizes and closes itself. Don't think there's much room for improvement on a double click!

[Arvy]

My problem is mostly that i can see no advantages for me to spend time to set it up or even just have it.
- I still need to be on my main machine to make an upload, because i still need to create the index.html and the ini.
- I still need to have a perfect replica on my system, cause i need to create index.html and the ini localy.
- People can already download individual files, through index.html or WB.
- Upload is also no improvement imo, I just start my FTP client and it automaticly connects, synchronizes and closes itself. Don't think there's much room for improvement on a double click!

Thanks. I appreciate your taking the time to elaborate.

Certainly no need to feel apologetic in any way at all. In fact, I actually agree with much of what you say. I was persuaded mainly by Nuno Brito's argument that, in his words: "The above system has been working fairly well but some wb projects are now growing outside the realm of the original developer and began involving many people. Therefore we need a much more dynamic way to keep things updated."

It appears, however, that we may be just slightly ahead of the curve, so to speak. That situation doesn't seem to apply to many people at present other than Peter (psc). Nevetheless, it may be worthwhile to keep the project somewhere on the back burner for possible utilitarian value in the future. For now, I'll probably just wrap it up with an "official" v0.30 release. It may have just a few minor additions possibly including one that I know Nuno wants desparately if I can do it without compromising server security.

Thanks again.

[pscEx]

My problem is mostly that i can see no advantages for me to spend time to set it up or even just have it.
- I still need to be on my main machine to make an upload, because i still need to create the index.html and the ini.
- I still need to have a perfect replica on my system, cause i need to create index.html and the ini localy.
- People can already download individual files, through index.html or WB.
- Upload is also no improvement imo, I just start my FTP client and it automaticly connects, synchronizes and closes itself. Don't think there's much room for improvement on a double click!

Let me tell a sample from my situation:
nativeEx has the WBManager functionality, where you can choose predefined 'selects' inside a project like

• Standard
• Standard w/o network
• Minimum
• cmd only
• Standard with BootSDI

etc.

Currenty I cannot use WinBuilder to upload the control files for this feature, because they are not displayed in the project tree.
(BTW: Same with .link files. Here the link target is uploaded)

Therefore until now I have to

• Upload the changed files by FTP
• Copy the files into a mirror which is hopefully actual
• Build updates.ini in the mirror
  (Dont forget to uncheck 'Skip Upload'! I already forgot it sometimes ... )
• Download updates.ini
• Merge the two updates.ini manually
• Upload updates.ini

With Arvy's solution

• Open the manager
• Browse to the target
• Upload the changed files from my original test project (no mirror)
• Rebuild updates.ini

Second sample:
Because 'Live is so easy' now, I added nativeEx_puzzleXP and nativeEx_trackWBInstall to the server.
Please not allow me to explain the 'old way' again here.
But What I did, was

• Copy the projects with FTP
• In 'Server Site Management' click 'Update List' > DONE

You do not see any advantage?
I see at least some minutes time to have a coffee.

BTW 'index.html' ???
I do not use it.
Instead that my index.html gives some information about the package, how to build etc.
And in the past I have had sometimes the surprise, that my index.html has been overwritten by an (for me) unneeded WinBuilder mechanism.

Peter

[pscEx]

For now, I'll probably just wrap it up with an "official" v0.30 release.

Please include one feature in v 0.30 which I made for me today:

When in the browser a text file, .script, .project or .link is left-clicked, it appears in the same browser window.
When you want to go back to the 'explorer' you have to confirm that there are POST data etc.
Additionally depending on the size of the actual folder, it takes a time to rebuild.

My change is to show the file in a new window, that means adding 'target=/"_blank/"' in current line 679

Maybe make this an option in config.php ...

Peter

[pscEx]

That situation doesn't seem to apply to many people at present other than Peter (psc).

There are only around 10 people maintaining a server.
And currently I seem to be the only one with more than 1 project on one server.

But I think that in Nuno's 'back head' there is an idea of having an unique data base accessable from any project.

Peter

[Arvy]

My change is to show the file in a new window, that means adding 'target=/"_blank/"' in current line 679

Sure. No problem. For some strange reason, the W3C XHTML standards frown on the target tag, but I'm sure we can do it another way. Maybe it should apply to left-clicking on all of the listed files so that they don't disturb the originating window.

But I think that in Nuno's 'back head' there is an idea of having an unique data base accessable from any project.

If so, I'm going to murder him. I would have loved doing a relational DBMS version. But he told me that I couldn't use any database and that everything had to be in one single PHP file. Those constraints and some others made the project at least twice as difficult as it needed to be if I had been allowed to do things in my own way, especially when he started piling on his additional "decoration" requests.

[pscEx]

If so, I'm going to murder him. He told me that I couldn't use any database and that everything had to be in one single PHP file.

Sorry, my fault. I did not think about mySQL or similar.
But for me a data base is a selection of well organized items, maybe one or more excel sheets, maybe one ore more well organized web sites.

Let me tell about the ice age:

Formally there has been only one site with a project.
Then the second project appeared.

And the idea came up to have an 'Archive' accessed by both projects.

But anywhen the Archive disappeared because at that time it was not applicable.

Now we have the chance to rebuild the 'Archive' idea. We currently have much more basic conditions to do so:

The API works (or should work) project independend
The URLs of different project can be maintained easily. They are all on the same sewrver.
Etc. ...

My dream is:

• Create a base project, maybe nativeEx_barebone
• Go into all the different project sites and download into your project, whatever you need
• Build the project
• RUNS!

(And I'm sure, Nuno has a similar dream)

Peter

[Arvy]

Dreams are good. Everybody has at least one. But, if you want others to share them, it's unwise to try to dictate one narrowly defined route as the only acceptable path to their achievement.

And that ends my philosophical sermon for the day.

[pscEx]

And that ends my philosophical sermon for the day.

Let me add (and end, too) my philosophical snippets:

I never asked you to do, but you delivered a package which works great for me.

If this topic will be closed because of no public interest: No problem for me. I'll continue to use and let it save my time.

Peter

[MedEvil]

Nuno Brito's argument that, in his words: "The above system has been working fairly well but some wb projects are now growing outside the realm of the original developer and began involving many people. Therefore we need a much more dynamic way to keep things updated."

I agree with that point. But to make the projects maintainable by more than 1 developer, the files that have to get created by Wb have to go! There's just no way around that.

Right now the original project has to be local, the online one is just a copy.
For multi developer projects the - or a online version has to be the original version.

If for instance, i could, after seeing at work, that someone posted a fixed script, simply upload it to my server, instead of loading it down in the evening on my computer, integrating it into the local project, create those pesky files and then upload the 3 changed files.
Then i would say:"Give it to me! Where have you been so long?"

[pscEx]

But to make the projects maintainable by more than 1 developer, the files that have to get created by Wb have to go!

We now are speaking only about using Arvy's management system.

Which files have to be created by WB?

(I hope you do not mean scripts )

Peter

[Arvy]

I agree with that point. But to make the projects maintainable by more than 1 developer, the files that have to get created by Wb have to go!

They could go if WinBuilder project managment were based on any kind of RDBMS arrangement. There would simply be no need to maintain .INI files or anything else like that within the scope of any project itself anywhere, not even for browsing and downloading purposes unless the individual project maintainer wanted them there for his own purposes. Hell, the database system itself could be located anywhere, even entirely separate from everything else, for that matter. It would need only properly authorized PHP calls, some or all of which could easily be fully automated, to whatever server(s) it was installed on.

That's one reason, amongst many, why that was my first reaction to Nuno's initial request -- until I re-read his constraints, that is.

[MedEvil]

We now are speaking only about using Arvy's management system.

Of corse, but for Arvy's system to become useful for the intended purpose, a few things need to be adopted.
It's like upgrading a bicycle with a engine and not adding a tank for the gas as well. Nice project, but absolutely useless this way.

Which files have to be created by WB?

(I hope you do not mean scripts )

Peter

Not quite!
index.html and updates.in

[Brito]

...
The API works (or should work) project independend
The URLs of different project can be maintained easily. They are all on the same sewrver.
Etc. ...

My dream is:

• Create a base project, maybe nativeEx_barebone
• Go into all the different project sites and download into your project, whatever you need
• Build the project
• RUNS!

(And I'm sure, Nuno has a similar dream)

Peter

Don't let me start talking too much about what I dream or you'll wind up getting bored with pages and pages of senseless text..


One thing that made me really happy was seeing possible a concept of API scripting that could help overcome a lot of barriers we had in the "ice-age" and made things really flexible enough to be used and recycled by present and future projects.

It helped because everyone can write and share these app scripts regardless of their favourite projects and be able to use them on any other compatible projects otherwise we'd be re-writing app scripts every couple of months.

Regarding the WinBuilder browser, MedEvil and Peter have a good point when they state that WinBuilder.exe shouldn't need to worry about producing and maintaining a web server and that a full range web application would better manage this much needed feature.

We didn't had a talented php developer willing to help us like this before and now I (finally) see a very good development capable of bringing a huge impact and evolution on the current way how things are done so I wouldn't mind exploring more about any other possible things to be done here.

---

Ideally, we should consider an administration capable of working in standalone mode and also tie itself to a "ring" of other trusted web servers where their resources could be better distributed and shared.

- Imagine for example a web server having the possibility of using other mirror web servers to distribute the heavy bandwidth usage and how a dynamically generated updates.ini would allow for end-users to download their project files from other mirror servers.

- Regarding app scripts - if we know that they can be shared across projects - how far could we evolve in terms of making app scripts become available for download to every other API compatible project?

- There is also the end-user perspective for people who have slim to none experience in handling mySQL or any other sort of complicated operations regarding server managenement or web applications and this is the reason I was asked for something portable and self-contained as much as humanly possible and even if it seems a titanic ammount of work for any programmer it is also true to the statement that popular solutions for the end user often require a genius level of talent from a developer to make them simple and acessible. Arvy, sorry for putting you under stress with these tight requirements.


Won't write much more for now but I'm really enjoying this project, please don't stop now.

[Arvy]

(I hope you do not mean scripts )

Actually, I've seen a few around here and there that might ... Oops! I'd better shut up right now.

[pscEx]

Nice project, but absolutely useless this way.

Maybe I'm a different user than you. For you with only one project it may be useless (did you already try the management system or is your decision theoretical?)
For me with several projects is is a great enhancement.

But as already told some posts above: I agree with Arvy to finish this discussion now. I'm glad and I really do not want to force all community members to be happy, too, using my way.

Peter

[pscEx]

Lot of traffic now!
And the logical way is hard to find!

Peter

[Arvy]

[... large snip ...]
- There is also the end-user perspective for people who have slim to none experience in handling mySQL or any other sort of complicated operations regarding server managenement or web applications and this is the reason I was asked for something portable and self-contained as much as humanly possible and even if it seems a titanic ammount of work for any programmer it is also true to the statement that popular solutions for the end user often require a genius level of talent from a developer to make them simple and acessible. Arvy, sorry for putting you under stress with these tight requirements.

The mistake you are making is a very common one in assuming that sophiticated "backend" processes necessarily impose complexity on the end user. In fact, in the hands of a talented programmer, and even one without very much talent, exactly the opposite is true.

My advice, FWIW, is that you avoid imposing "design specifications" of any kind whatever and stick to setting forth the mission goals. We who have been involved in consensus standards development learned long ago that restrictive design parameters are something to avoid like the plague except as a fallback of absolute last resort when a goal can be stated in no other way. Just say that you want end-user simplicity and let it go at that.

Won't write much more for now but I'm really enjoying this project, please don't stop now.

Well, quite frankly, I think this project has gone about as far as it can go so long as the existing development parameters continue to apply. As I said earlier, I'll add a few more minor features, but that's about it in the current circumstances, I think.

[pscEx]

The mistake you are making is a very common one in assuming that sophiticated "backend" processes necessarily impose complexity on the end user. In fact, in the hands of a talented programmer, and even one without very much talent, exactly the opposite is true.


My advice, FWIW, is that you avoid imposing "design specifications" of any kind whatever and stick to setting forth the mission goals (line full?)
We who have been involved in consensus standards development learned long ago that restrictive design parameters are something to avoid like the plague except as a fallback of absolute last resort when a goal can be stated in no other way. Just say that you want end-user simplicity and let it go at that.

Well, quite frankly, I think this project has gone about as far as it can go so long as the existing development parameters continue to apply.
As I said earlier, I'll add a few more minor features, but that's about it in the current circumstances, I think.

All the above smileys are by me.

@Arvy
If your time allows you to start a new solution following your ideas (W/O demanding WinBuilde.exe changes) I'll be the first beta tester (and hopefully not the only one like now)

Peter