Vahur Krouverk wrote:
> 
> With POV-Ray 3.5 release there is considerable interest in source code
> 'hacking', many users fix bugs and add new features. Perhaps it would be
> good to unite such efforts and create one version, which contains all
> useful modifications. Best would be, if there is public (CVS) server,
> which hosts source code and users can commit fixes and updates to it.

Hmm, for 4.0 this could be interesting but i don't know the official plans
in that concern.

For 3.5 patches i'm not sure if it would be of much help.  Surely it would
help coders making small extensions or fixes available, but would it
improve the quality of the product?  The quality of most megapov functions
was relatively low compared to those things now in 3.5 - and this although
megapov is relatively well tested and comes with a small documentation of
all features and sample scenes.  Now if everyone can add any tiny
extension to a CVS tree without testing and writing any documentation this
could result in a lot of dead code not of much use for the POV-Ray
programmer, not to speak of the regular user who wants a ready-to-use
version.

I would probably start it the other way round.  A 3.5 based megapov (as it
was already discussed quite frequently, it does not necessarily have to be
maintained by the same people as the old megapov. If you, Vahur, plan to
release a 3.5 based version of POVMan soon this could form the basis of a
new patch collection too) could be extended with a standardized system for
adding new functions.  These could be suggested in the newsgroups and
would then be tested by those interested and if they conform the
requirements and are found useful they would be added to the next release
of the patch collection.  A (public read only) CVS like system could be
useful for this but note the difference - it would not encourage a 'submit
and forget'-like manner of committing things.

What would definitely be a good idea is to maintain a list of officially
approved bug fixes.  A regularly updated snapshot of the official source
with those modifications applied would be useful too.  IIRC there are
already quite some fixes that were added to the official source code after
the first release of 3.5.

Christoph

-- 
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Last updated 13 Aug. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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