On Tue, 2007-01-23 at 01:09 +1100, Tim Ansell wrote: > > For minisec... should be able to do it fairly either. But I'll take a > > look at Rusty's (I saw his talk too ;-) > > Your an LCA attendee?
Yep, Sydneysider[1], so it's just a short trip away. All good conference ;-) > > > If it's just setup problems this information may help, > > > http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.games.tp.general/72 > > > > > > Lee is working on making the server easier to setup. Very useful. That page needs to made into a proper page. > We welcome bug reports, information, etc about how hard it was to get > going. To be frank - I found it a PITA. Now I to be honest a lot of this info I have since found, but it is scattered - so it's not easy. So at this point I'm going to be a real critical bastard. So some things I'd like to see/see improved: * A quick overview of how to set things up - It would be nice to have every step from the first apt-get/yum etc to entering data for the first turn. Currently it stops at running the server. * Dependencies - Both distro and TP related ones - The Python modules needed aren't always easy to figure out since normally you find yourself staring at a stack trace, and need to work out which python-X lib you need to install. - The C++ ones are better, at least the configure ones are meaningful -> However it would be nice if ALL the dependencies where checked before it barfed - a nice "You are missing the following libs: libfoo (>2.3) libbar ... This is a general autoconf bitch however - it is tough to get it all right. * More dependencies: The webpage should list the exact list of modules one needs to check out of darcs[2], and what order they need to be built/installed. * Which server and client versions we should use... Python or CPP? Which is easiest to get going etc? Which works. * Once a server is installed, tpserver-cpp should just work. Having to set up a config file (by default in /etc/... too!) is annoying. The supplied config file should be ready to go. Even better would be a quick start in the client to launch the server with the appropriate parameters. * More verbosity about the basic state of the server (a status command maybe?). So I can start the server and it tell me what is going on. (And it took me a while to figure out I could type commands to the server at the console...) A complete list of commands, and complete interactive help too (help game should list all the game commands). Positives: There is a lot of documentation on the website, which is _Very_ nice. the main problem I think is organisation - most of the info is there, just not in an easily digestable format. Biggest problem so far: Sourceforge bug tracker is the worst bug tracking system I've ever used. - Scanning existing bugs is a PITA for non-devs[3] - It timed out when trying to upload a core file for a bug (and the whole bug was not reported!) - fortunately I was patient enough to file it again without the core dump. - Email notifications are almost impossible to read. So another recommendation I'd have is _please_ find another BTS. Otherwise I'm likely to use the mailing list for bug reports. > Is there anything missing from the competition page? Nothing I've noticed, but I haven't really dug into that yet. > Anything which would have been useful for you? A faster internet connection... ;-) > We would ultimately like it to be a 2-3 step process to get everything > going. A while yet - however it may be worth looking at an automatic check out of required client and server modules, with an 'install' script - of course when it fails... it will fail terribly. It is a lot of work, so for now maybe the best thing to do will be to make the required info easier to find for newbies. Regards, nash [1] And UNSW alumni. [2] As a semi-aside, getting the joy of using another RCS isn't a great thing, especially as the darcs home page is pretty poor for info - until you use google to search it... Not sure you guys can fix that however. [3] And from past experience, devs too. _______________________________________________ tp-devel mailing list [email protected] http://www.thousandparsec.net/tp/mailman.php/listinfo/tp-devel
