rename the "textpattern" folder

Mary · 2006-12-23 08:34:06

…and would like to apply our own changes to this branch in a bit of a quandary. Renaming the textpattern folder is something I really want to do for my installs, I was ready to do it after 4.0.4 but SVN keeps changing.

There are still a handful of important bugs to fix in 4.0.x. Once we have 4.0.5, things will calm down. But any software worth it’s salt will invariably have to be updated from time to time, that’s just the nature of it.

I’m not sure I understand where the quandry enters in that instance, though. If you’re running the latest stable, you apply your changes. If you’re running off svn, you can do the same. The whole idea behind svn is that you can merge changes and fix conflicts so…

…since now all focus has apparently shifted to Crockery.

That has been the plan since long before I joined the dev team. The purpose is to allow users to continue to run and use 4.0 for some time to come and still receive support and bug fixes.

Once there is a release for 4.1, there will be two different stable lines running, and they will in many ways be very different animals (they already are in some respects). You will be able to upgrade if you want (and I think you will), but you won’t have to.

With Crockery being in “When it’s ready mode”, where does that leave us that want to add features to the stable branch?

Currently: waiting, because the only stable branch right now is “closed”, as it were. If you want to add new features, you submit patches to crockery.

Sencer · 2006-12-23 09:27:38

I am sorry, I don’t get what the quandry is at all. Are you saying that you would prefer it, if we stopped fixing bugs, and checking in anything to the 4.0.x branch? I don’t see how that would be helpful, and sory, it’s not going to happen for a while. But for you personally, if you do not care for fixes and want to maintain your own branch anyhow, why not simply do so – I don’t see how us providing fixes and support has somehow worsened your situation.

I am guessing I misread your post, so I am looking forward to being corrected. ;)

hcgtv · 2006-12-23 17:09:30

Mary wrote:

There are still a handful of important bugs to fix in 4.0.x.

Would you have a list of these important bugs?

Sencer wrote:

But for you personally, if you do not care for fixes and want to maintain your own branch anyhow, why not simply do so – I don’t see how us providing fixes and support has somehow worsened your situation.

Well, from what Mary said, if we make changes to the core files, then we give up support. Mary runs a heavily modified PunBB forum, if she has any issues with it, she is more than welcome on the support forums.

Crockery is a ways away, all patches submitted are being applied to it. So we have no choice but to tweak the stable branch if we want custom sites. But if I tweak, then I give up being able to submit bug reports, is that what I gather?

Mary · 2006-12-24 00:20:05

You’re confusing/mixing the role of a bug reporter/tester with that of a user.

How would we know if your “tweak” hadn’t caused it? We wouldn’t, we’d have to play the cat and mouse game, running round and round. Not productive, just extremely irritating for both parties. If you don’t think this would happen, take a look at the fun we had, trying to help troubleshoot people’s installs when they tried to add search capability to their custom fields without knowing what the hell they were doing. I don’t relish the thought of this becoming commonplace.

No one said you can’t use the forum, just don’t expect the developers to be able to help you if something blows up.

Sencer · 2006-12-24 20:01:58

hcgtv wrote:

Well, from what Mary said, if we make changes to the core files, then we give up support.

Well, ok, then that has nothing to with crockery, or how often we release, or which version is supported or not supported. Our position is, that we do not have the time to help with solving problems, that may have nothing to do with textpattern. In the same way, that we (meaning the dev-team) cannot support plugins, we cannot support code that is changed – for the simple reason that we do not know what the new code is and how it affects textpattern (and usually do not have the resources to find out). So, if people want to maintain private forks/branches of textpattern, it’s probably a good idea to also hve an unmodified version running, to be able to check problems against. Tthat way you and we will know if your changes are responsible or not for the problems, and if a problem affects textpatterns we can try to help you with it.

Mary runs a heavily modified PunBB forum, if she has any issues with it, she is more than welcome on the support forums.

I am curious: How do you find out what the source of a problem is? Do you have the users send you all their modifications and run them yourself, to find out if the problem is with their modifications; and then do you fix their code for them?

hcgtv · 2006-12-26 16:41:17

Sencer wrote:

I am curious: How do you find out what the source of a problem is? Do you have the users send you all their modifications and run them yourself, to find out if the problem is with their modifications; and then do you fix their code for them?

Well, let’s take a current conversation about forum integration into a front end site. As you can see the user posts the code they modified and Smartys helps them out. This is common practice and it’s been working well on our support forums. If by posting code the problem is not solved, then either private email or IRC conversations are needed to get to the root of the problem.

What PunBB has, are a very knowledgeable and helpful group of people that know their PunBB code. Rickard recognized this and invited five of them to become part of the core team, now we are 8 strong.

Sencer · 2006-12-26 18:18:57

Well, that looks like a mirror of this thread:
http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=20265

It’s not that it is forbidden to be helped, or that we won’t try to, if we have the time. It’s simply a matter of convention that you can’t expect to get any help. I think we’re really talking about the same thing. I am not familiar with punBB, but with a lot of other open source software, and it is my impression that at least for the textpattern forums I can say with certainty that support from the developers themselves is way more common here than on a lot of other support forums I am aware of. But that’s just my (maybe not so humble) opinion. ;)

hcgtv · 2006-12-26 19:00:01

Sencer wrote:

I am not familiar with punBB, but with a lot of other open source software, and it is my impression that at least for the textpattern forums I can say with certainty that support from the developers themselves is way more common here than on a lot of other support forums I am aware of.

I agree, these forums are a valuable resource to the Textpattern community. All the developers do lend a hand helping out new or veteran users with their related problems.

For me, the support forums of an Open Source project is the most important aspect I use to determine if I will use the application or not. No matter how good the code base is, if the forums paint a dismal picture of the project, then it’s time to move on to the next one.

Shaliza · 2007-06-04 22:37:37

So is it not worth it to rename the folder? I also wanted to do it, but I don’t want to jeopardize anything in the process.

mrdale · 2007-06-04 22:42:12

Dude, just make a symbolic link and name it something else. Works like a charm.

Shaliza · 2007-06-04 22:45:14

Maybe I need more coffee or something, but for some reason, I’m lost on how to go about doing that.

mrdale · 2007-06-04 22:50:08

OK, so it’s just like making a shortcut in windows or an alias in Mac land.

Nice FTP apps will have a menu item that says “make symbolic link” otherwise…
At the command line (via SSH) and in the root directory you can do

ln -s textpattern whatever_you_wanna_callit

I think that’ll do it.

Last edited by mrdale (2007-06-04 22:50:43)

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#13 2006-12-23 08:34:06

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#14 2006-12-23 09:27:38

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#15 2006-12-23 17:09:30

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#16 2006-12-24 00:20:05

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#17 2006-12-24 20:01:58

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#18 2006-12-26 16:41:17

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#19 2006-12-26 18:18:57

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#20 2006-12-26 19:00:01

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#21 2007-06-04 22:37:37

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#22 2007-06-04 22:42:12

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#23 2007-06-04 22:45:14

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

#24 2007-06-04 22:50:08

Re: rename the "textpattern" folder

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