Hello Folks, I apologize for my intrusion but I thought this would be the opportune time to mention something I've been 'feeling'... I receive these CS developers emails more so as information than anything else. Most of what I know about Crystal Space and CEL and even B2CS has come from the mailing lists that are intended for internal development. I actually have 2 years of these emails saved - or something close to that amount.
My point being, as a user of CS (for almost 2 years) the biggest difficulty and perhaps frustration that I find is the ambiguity of finding documentation that I feel is the latest and greatest - or at least current with the most recent release. I realize that the release comes with documentation however I feel communication with the end user feels distant. The website as mentioned has not changed since I first looked at Crystal Space years ago. This would leave one to believe that the state of Crystal Space is the same as its status 2 or more years ago - same features as that time - and we all know that's not true. While window shopping though, it would appear to be. Unless someone spends much time digging around what can seem like random sites on the net, the current state of CS as far as features and capabilities along with the appropriate documentation is difficult to source and trust. I also find it difficult to know whether my questions should be directed towards CS or CEL at times but that's likely me. I know you guys get bombarded with questions quite often that you must find yourself repeating over and over and over again. This could be avoided by having clear links on the main site to the most current documentation and indicating that - so there is no guess work. Perhaps an FAQ right on the main page for installation? Environment variables.. etc. I know you all must have answered that question about a bajillion times. Since the site looks old (And is old), it does not promote faith that the documentation it refers to is up to date. I really hope that no one takes this as offensive, truly I am only trying to convey my personal feelings about the biggest issue I have when working with CS and CEL and B2CS for that matter. After over 2 years it always comes down to where to find the most current information and making sure that I know the info I am looking at is what is most current - even if it needs to be updated. As long as I know that is the best that there is right now - I can stop looking ad start reading. Sorry to intrude - Feel free to ignore more if it's appropriate! ;-) Thanks for all your hard work also - ALL of you! I can't adequately express how cool it is to have access to something like CS and it's compliments. You all make me look GOOOOOOOD! -----Original Message----- From: Jorrit Tyberghein [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 3:05 PM To: CS developers and users list Subject: Re: [CsMain] Release cycle I agree with all these points. However I would like to point out that I no longer have the motivation and time to work on such administrative things like releasing and websites and so on. I would very much prefer to have someone (or a group of people) dedicated to this task. I of course still plan to work on Crystal Space and CEL on a technical level. Greetings, On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 6:57 PM, Christian Van Brussel <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > Just as my 2 cent, I think that it is important for CS to have a more > sustained release cycle. > > First of all, CS doesn't appear externally to be a living project, and > right now, it is pretty hard to know what is going on in the CS > development. Almost the only way is by studying the trac timeline (btw, > the timeline doesn't show the svn commits since Octobre, 17th). A public > project should be more open to the public, and therefore give an easier > access to it. Having more frequent releases, and also an access to an > unstable release, would probably be better from the communication point > of view. > > Still about the public's image of CS, more frequent releases would > advertise more CS. For example, the last news of the CS web site was 6 > months ago, and the previous one was one year ago. By releasing more > often, people will talk more often about CS, then CS will get more > contributions, etc. > > About the testings, right now the tests are made by the CS's developers, > adding them more work load. If you give access to an unstable release, > people will beta-test by themselves CS, and, who knows, will correct the > bugs by themselves too. > > Last point, I think that binary packages/installers are important too. > CS has many dependencies and is not easy to compile and run. Many > potential users of CS are stuck by this, and again it is not great for > the advertising of CS. For example, an artist shouldn't have to install > all dependencies by himself, understand that they have to checkout the > svn repository of both CS and blender2cs, all of that to finally gain > access to the new animesh written one year ago. Most of the artists > won't simply be able to do that, even if they really want to. > > So I also agree to have: > - more frequent releases (about 3 to 6 months sounds good) > - a stable release, an unstable/testing release, and a svn one (look at > Debian: http://www.debian.org/releases/) > - binary packages > - scripts to create releases easily and quickly > > Regards, > Christian > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- > Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA > is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your > developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay > ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! > http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference > _______________________________________________ > Crystal-main mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crystal-main > Unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe > -- Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org) and CEL (http://cel.crystalspace3d.org) Support Crystal Space. Donate at https://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=649 Personal page: http://users.telenet.be/jorritTyberghein/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Crystal-main mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crystal-main Unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ Crystal-main mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crystal-main Unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
