[ Response to Eion is below the response to Shlomi ]
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On 05-09-2016 03:31, Shlomi Fish wrote:
There are multiple ways that the plugins page can be improved:
Can you provide a link to it?
https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/ThirdPartyPlugins
1. Removing the links that are no longer resolving.
Well preferably we should search for newer (and working) links
instead or maybe use archive.org if possible.
Possibly, if the archived page contains a usable version of the add-on that
works with the latest Pidgin.
2. Indicating outdated plugins that no longer work.
Indicating them as what?
As not working (but possibly forkable).
3. Indicating whether binary releases are available, or better yet,
providing binaries for all plugins that do not have them yet
(mostly for MS-Windows DLLs)
Sounds good, but providing binaries may involve a lot of work on the
part of the maintainers of the page.
Assuming that the 3rd-party plugins can be divided into two groups, abandoned
and actively maintained, I suggest the following:
a. For abandoned plugins, fork them; put a copy on, say, github; build binaries
for those that cannot compile from source.
This would be a one-time operation for the page maintainer(s).
b. For actively maintained plugins, reach out to the developers and ask them if
they could compile and/or cross-compile binaries when a release is warranted,
or even better, set up an automated build system (something like
https://travis-ci.org), or even have the pidgin team build and host the
binaries.
There are many options, what is needed is the will to address the issue.
4. Indicating the date/time of the latest source and binary
releases (useful for plugins that change often)
Sounds good, but see
http://perl.plover.com/yak/12views/samples/notes.html#sl-9 .
A plugin can be considered actively maintained even after it is "finished" if
the developer responds to tickets.
Anyway, the problem that I am trying to address is different. I am perfectly happy with
a plugin that hasn't been updated in ages but works smoothly. It's the plugins that are
a "work in progress" that I am concerned about.
Case in point: The Yahoo 2016 protocol plugin.
When I open a ticket, I am often told that the problem was fixed in a specific
commit, or asked if I use the latest DLL. Since I cannot build from source at
this time, and the DLL is hosted on Eion's site without any information on when
it was built or what commits got into it, I find the situation uncomfortable.
I may be able to invest some time in working on that page.
That would be great!
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On 05-09-2016 19:55, Eion Robb wrote:
There's been a few attempts at a Pidgin Plugins Website over the
years. Most of them turned out as flops.
That is unfortunate. I find the 3rd-party plugins to be an important part of Pidgin's
"ecosystem"
As a plugin developer, I feel that having somewhere like
http://adiumxtras.com/ or https://addons.instantbird.org/ to be able
to upload plugins to would be great, but as a Pidgin dev, I'd be very
nervous about hosting dll/so's and the added complications of testing
for malware that goes along with it.
Maybe a compromise can be struck, with Pidgin's group working together with
plugin developers to provide a solution.
Options can include hooks into the plugins' source repositories.
The page can have links to the plugins' pages but have some sort of up-to-date
"status" for each one (automatically updated or triggered by the plugin author
actions).
Also see my reply to Shlomi (above).
1. Removing the links that are no longer resolving.
The ThirdPartyPlugins wiki is editable, feel free to remove or update
those links
Being a newcomer to the party, and not well versed in the way of the Pidgin,
I'd rather not touch the wiki myself for now.
2. Indicating outdated plugins that no longer work.
Due to the way Pidgin follows semver, all plugins *should* work with
newer versions in any Pidgin 2.x release. Are you finding some
plugins that aren't?
No idea what "semver" is, but when I first installed Pidgin, I went over many
of the plugins on the wiki page and I remember that some (a small number) failed to work.
3. Indicating whether binary releases are available, or better yet,
providing binaries for all plugins that do not have them yet
(mostly for MS-Windows DLLs)
See above about not hosting dll's
Please see my response to Shlomi above.
Abandoned plugins can be forked and releases created from source. For actively
maintained plugins, their authors could be engaged.
4. Indicating the date/time of the latest source and binary
releases (useful for plugins that change often)
This could change often and would just end up with noise.
What's wrong with it changing often? That's the point!
Wikipedia has an "infobox" for its software topics which includes the supported
platforms, dates and versions of releases, etc.
I like Shlomi Fish's link about it :)
Please see my response to his link.
In the past, we used to have additional columns of information on the
ThirdPartyPlugins wiki page, however this just caused additional
noise and gamification of devs trying to push their plugins to the
top. After that was a blight on the inboxes, I reorganised it all to
be alphabetical, and removed all the fluff that was unnecessary.
Keep it alphabetical, but the dates of releases are not fluff, it is important
information for people that want to use the latest versions of the plugins
without manually checking each one.
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