Re: [vdr] The issue of orphaned plugins, addons and patches (Re: pvr-input)
Hi, 1) too many vdr-related projects dying or being orphaned when the original author looses interest In most cases, its probably not just loosing interest, but running out of time. Handling a job, a family and a time-consuming hobby all at once is nearly impossible... Yes, but what should happen to those projects? The lcdproc plugin has been orphaned by its original author, but another author has published several patched and greatly improved versions. Yet he doesn't consider himself the new maintainer. So is it abandoned? The analogtv plugin is abandoned, yet it's part of some vdr distributions. Their packagers keep patching it so that it works with vdr 1.6.x. Should it be dropped? 3) too many different locations to find sources and patches For short term patches, if a new VDR version breaks something, forums are a good source for patches. Counterexample: PDAExport is a project that the developer distributes on the German vdr-portal.de forum. There is no homepage and contact address - the readme contains his forum nickname. For more long term patches, the wikis are a good place to look, and they're easy to maintain by everyone. So if you find some useful patch, don't hesitate to add a link to the wiki. Which Wiki? There are several, and the German vdr-wiki.de seems to be more up to date than the English linuxtv.org/vdrwiki http://www.vdr-wiki.de/wiki/index.php/Plugins http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Plugins So far, there seem to be too many locations to send patches to. Regards, Hanno ___ vdr mailing list vdr@linuxtv.org http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vdr
Re: [vdr] The issue of orphaned plugins, addons and patches (Re: pvr-input)
Hanno Zulla wrote: So it appears that we have a problem with 1) too many vdr-related projects dying or being orphaned when the original author looses interest In most cases, its probably not just loosing interest, but running out of time. Handling a job, a family and a time-consuming hobby all at once is nearly impossible... 3) too many different locations to find sources and patches For short term patches, if a new VDR version breaks something, forums are a good source for patches. For more long term patches, the wikis are a good place to look, and they're easy to maintain by everyone. So if you find some useful patch, don't hesitate to add a link to the wiki. Cheers, Udo ___ vdr mailing list vdr@linuxtv.org http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vdr
[vdr] The issue of orphaned plugins, addons and patches (Re: pvr-input)
Hi everyone, Simon Baxter schrieb: Good searching!! No, I just checked vdr-wiki.de, they have an extensive (but German) list of plugins plus patches and current maintainers. http://www.vdr-wiki.de/wiki/index.php/Plugins Which leads to a related topic. It appears that several plugins and addons are orphaned, despite having a lot of users and despite developers still releasing patches. What to do about these packages? There is a lot of work right now for package distributors, each of them maintaining a different set of patches for their respective distribution (analogtv is an example). For some projects, there are patches flying around in this mailing list, on vdr-wiki.de or even in obscure discussion threads on vdr-portal.de. Some patches are published by new developers on their homepages (the pvr-input and lcdproc plugins are examples for this), but if you ask these developers if they want to declare themselves the new maintainer of the plugin/addon, they thankfully decline. So it appears that we have a problem with 1) too many vdr-related projects dying or being orphaned when the original author looses interest 2) noone daring to pickup the ball when the original author looses interest and 3) too many different locations to find sources and patches What can be done about this? (If this has been discussed before, please let me know where to find it in the archive. Didn't find old discussions about this after a very brief search.) Regards, Hanno ___ vdr mailing list vdr@linuxtv.org http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vdr
