Do you think switching to Git increase participation?

[antoine]

This is aimed at the developers. I'm not a developer, but it sounds like it is very easy for people to get started cloning and changing the source with git.

[Arthur]

I'm not a developer either, but from what I gather, this is not likely. It's easy already; Git could make it easier to handle many new developers but the numbers haven't really increased much all the years I've been following the project.

[antoine]

Well, I'm going do everything in my power to get more developers.

[ctdabomb]

Well, I'm going do everything in my power to get more developers.

good luck! I hope you do. (not that the current ones are bad they are awesome, but more would be nice)

[antoine]

Yeah, I think they'd like that too.

[Arthur]

You can bet your tall hat they will.

[Totoplus62]

Help is always needed : Cooperation is better than competition

[Funto]

Not necessarily, competition gives a lot of motivation
From my personal experience as a casual STK developer, I started contributing because Auria gave me SVN write access
IRC channe and foruml are active, developers are there, project is fun and source code is _extremely_ well commented and documented. Maybe switching to GitHub would help for the visibility of the project, but I think STK is already very developer-friendly.

[heyda]

Maybe it's just a lack of communication?
I joined some FLOSS/Open Data projects and mostly aren't really unfriendly, but nobody notices you or offers help. I joined others, where people say hello, offered help and support while joining (point to important things, give feedback, ...).
So if STK team is friendly and well commentednun (see ohlo), this is definitly a good point to promote

Back to Git(hub) yes, it makes joining pretty easy, but the point is more, that it changes the way people contribute (IMHO). It's more on submitting smaller pieces and my impression is more agile development style. The visibility can be inceased (as people look what is there elsewhere around) but managing esp. the social aspect can be more time consuming...

[Auria]

I am not sure this would help so much, because usually after people submitted a couple good patches we are happy to give them commit access. So I don't think we really have a problem that it's hard for new developers to submit changes

[antoine]

It's seems more social. The network graph is a really interesting way to see what developers are working on. I have a feeling more people would start experimenting with the code.

[heyda]

Maybe what should come first is a overview wikipage, that introduces into STK architecture and points out the basic facts. For example, that irrlicht is used for GFX, what approach the AI has (agent based, algorithm XYZ, ...) and how is all put together. This would be the only thing, that I (from an external view) currently miss and that I created at some other projects before, as it makes easier to get an idea on where to search and who might be responsibile for a specific functionality.

[Arthur]

Ever seen http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/dox ... le=doxygen ?

[heyda]

Sorry folks, was my mistake Usually the most use autogenerated docs just for a skelleton of their software and don't think on a general introduction. Superb!

[Totoplus62]

Not necessarily, competition gives a lot of motivation
.

I am in the second year of Preparation for national competitive entrance exams to leading French "grandes écoles", specializing in biology (I don't think CPGE does exist in english speaking countries). So i know what you mean but i'm fed up with competition !

[Funto]

Haha la prépa, bonne chance Totoplus62, on est beaucoup à y être passés, on en ressort vivants

[hiker]

I am not sure this would help so much, because usually after people submitted a couple good patches we are happy to give them commit access. So I don't think we really have a problem that it's hard for new developers to submit changes

I'd agree with that. We had someone working on STK by having his own GIT repository, and then just submitting the patches - so even if someone only wants to use GIT, that's no problem.

GIT does not offer anything on top of SVN that we need at this stage, we would just spent more time adjusting all our scripts to work with GIT.

Cheers,
Joerg

[hiker]

Maybe it's just a lack of communication?

For a while we actually had some advertising in a track (STK looking for developers). The original tux tollway is long gone, but perhaps we could add this back in some other track? On a blackboard in Math Class? Or perhaps a plane flying with a long flag with that text on it (though that would be difficult to model to look good).

I joined some FLOSS/Open Data projects and mostly aren't really unfriendly, but nobody notices you or offers help. I joined others, where people say hello, offered help and support while joining (point to important things, give feedback, ...).
So if STK team is friendly and well commentednun (see ohlo), this is definitly a good point to promote

Back to Git(hub) yes, it makes joining pretty easy, but the point is more, that it changes the way people contribute (IMHO). It's more on submitting smaller pieces and my impression is more agile development style. The visibility can be inceased (as people look what is there elsewhere around) but managing esp. the social aspect can be more time consuming...

We do have a rather agile development/commit style: I encourage people to commit early and often (as long as the code compiles and 'mostly' works) - one reason being that there is a backup Bigger pieces of work can just be done on a separate branch. We are happy to give developer their own branch where they can work on, so we can see what happens and provide early feedback.

I think a major problem is the game style: STK probably attracts a less 'coding savvy' crowed then other games. Also we tend to attract younger people - who are amazing for their age, but often not yet up to improving STK. This is then combined with the fact that STK isn't really an easy program: while documentation and design isn't too bad, there is just a full physics engine under the hood, and it's also easier (I'd guess) to find java and other languages than C++.

There is also the fact that (at least) I get a bit tired - you have no idea how often I have written long emails and chats on IRC about online mode ... only to get exactly nothing back, a big waste of time. So honestly, anyone implementing online mode now initially gets only a pointer to the wiki pages which have enough links to give an idea on how complicated this will be. Similarly with other areas I would love to improve (battle mode AI, tutorial, driver-specific voices) - some of it is actually partly implemented (e.g. kart specific sounds - we had to remove this because it was incredible boring without enough variety in the voices).

Maybe that's a self-fulfilling prophecy now - if anyone should not feel encourage to help, please let me know

Cheers,
Joerg

[noname120]

The advantage of GIT (using github.com) is that it's easy to pull a patch, create a new ticket.
The interface is very sleek

[coug36]

I myself use git locally when I'm tinkering with STK. Git provides a very handy `git svn` command for doing this:

http://learn.github.com/p/git-svn.html

Sure, you don't get the slick GitHub interface and all of the pull request features, but you can do all your local commits and branching/merging without screwing up the upstream repository.