[PythonCAD] Centralized SCM not the problem

[José Antonio Martín Prieto]

Hi,
I agree with both Glenn and Eric.
I think that SCM could be justified if there were a lot of developers,
and changes to the code in the repo were dependent on Art. But this is
not the case: there are not a lot of developers.
By the way, I know how to use svn, but I don't know anything about SCM and git.

I'm, much like Glenn, a casual developer. I have coded some basic
python programs and have read a lot about python. But I really get
lost in PythonCAD code. This is a problem of mine, because PythonCAD
code is great, as are the guidelines that art wrote in the website.

I would like to help further in the development of PythonCAD. I made
up the web site and created the wiki, but I would like to do some hard
work also. But a project as complex as PythonCAD is too much for me at
the moment.

So I have a suggestion. In order to help casual developers, maybe Art
(and other expert developers, if any) could write a more exhaustive
guide for PythonCAD coding, so that the architecture is more
understandable. I know this effort could seem useless in the short
term, but I'm sure that it could encourage more casual developers in
the long term.

About the profile of potential developers, I think that there are two
groups interested in PythonCAD. First, expert coders with only basic
knowledge of CAD, and second, expert CAD users with only basic
knowledge of programming. That's why I think that my suggestion could
be useful.

-- José Antonio

On 5/25/07, Glenn Meader <glenn at chromakinetics.com> wrote:
> I agree that centralized SCM is not an issue preventing participation by
> developers.
>
> Other issues are much more critical.
> PythonCAD is a moderately complex application.
> I am a casual developer just learning Python.
>
> One major barrier to my participation is simply figuring out how the code is
> architected so that I can understand where to make changes and/or additions.
>
> I spent a bunch of hours on this, submitted some patches for R36, but still
> don't know how to get started implementing things.
>
> For example:
> Implementing Architectural dimensions (Feet, inches and fractions). I sent
> Art some Python code to convert decimal feet to Arch dims, but I can't yet
> figure out how to integrate that code into PythonCAD...
>
> I'd also like to add scrollbars to the drawing area, but there's a huge
> learning curve to the GTK toolkit, and I don't really understand how
> PythonCAD draws into the drawing area enough to understand how implementing
> scrolling would affect that.
>
> More detailed code documentation and a detailed spec of the software
> architecture would be very helpful. Like: exactly what methods in what
> objects are called when a user clicks a button to do something.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pythoncad-bounces at python.org [mailto:pythoncad-bounces at python.org] On
> Behalf Of Eric Wilhelm
> Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 4:07 PM
> To: pythoncad at python.org
> Subject: Re: [PythonCAD] Post R36 plans
>
> # from Art Haas
> # on Thursday 24 May 2007 11:59 am:
>
> >One thing I want to do, and I've said it before, is to replace the
> >centralized Subversion repository with a distributed SCM.
>
> I have some doubts that this will make that big of a difference to
> contributors.
>
> That's just my take on it.  I think SCM is fairly minor among the number
> of factors in open-source community building.
>
> While there's no science to it, I think the time/money, skill, and
> motivation factors are more significant.  What is the barrier-to-entry
> for developers and what audience (i.e. profession) are they in?
>
> --Eric
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> PythonCAD mailing list
> PythonCAD at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythoncad
>


-- 
"In a world without frontiers, who needs Gates and Windows?