Maintaining/Creating TCZ Extensions

[GravityBox]

I hope I'm posting this in the right place, but I'd like to bring this to the attention of the forum moderators/admins who could provide a new sub-forum for people to post when they're making new extensions (or updating/rebuilding old ones)

As I see it right now, there's a select few people who review TCZ extensions - which is great and all, it should be kept that way. However, for people working on extensions to submit, I can see there's occasionally duplicate work/submissions. (such as what just happened with me and another member - we both submitted a new version of irssi)

I'd like to suggest making a new sub-forum in TCE talk for users to make a thread for the extension they're working on: once they're complete/tested, then they could be submitted for review? I feel like this would take a small load off the admins, considering we would be able to maintain a thread about each extension for search purposes, and would help in getting testing feedback from the rest of the community! (EDIT: Example, start a thread about making an irssi extension, post progress (if necessary), post a testing tcz for some feedback, followed by a submission to the app repo?)

Of course, I'm new here, so if there's a reason that this is not here, please educate me as to why? I'd really like to know, especially if I overlooked a method that you guys already use.

Thanks for your time!

[Misalf]

I agree a sub section for posting submitted extensions might be helpful for reducing redundant work.

Posting extension on the forum is a potential risk for the admins, as no one knows what the extensions contain.

[GravityBox]

Okay, so maybe not necessarily posting it publicly, but at least you would have an option to post progress, and you would have a permanent thread for support for that extension (i.e. eliminate the many threads of "xxx in extension xxx missing deps" or similar)

Also, perhaps there's a guideline that could be agreed upon, such as offering the source code used to build, along with configuration options so that others could have precise instructions to build the tcz themselves to help test/troubleshoot? EDIT: Instead of offering a pre-built tcz (for reasons you mentioned)

That being said, I'm just brainstorming offering up ideas to help everyone out!

[nitram]

Good ideas. To PM an extension to another member i think is acceptable. The other member should be aware of the risks. Last time i PMed an extension for testing i provided very detailed build notes, so the user could recompile from source if desired. Unfortunately, no testing feedback was provided so it ended up being wasted time and effort. So things don't always work out like planned and, in this example, only added to the work load required to prepare the extension.

[coreplayer2]

Normally one would include the build script together with the extension and all it's required files in the submitted tar file.

Build scripts are then posted with the source files and are available to everyone from here http://tinycorelinux.net/6.x/x86/tcz/src/

 

[GravityBox]

Normally one would include the build script together with the extension and all it's required files in the submitted tar file.

Build scripts are then posted with the source files and are available to everyone from here http://tinycorelinux.net/6.x/x86/tcz/src/

 

That's awesome and much appreciated. Defeated one of the purposes of this thread.

I still think it would be a good idea to have a dedicated thread for each extension, and if someone dropped a project, someone else could pick it up at whim. (case scenario the maintainer of an extension leaves the community for whatever reason)

Also, would allow people newer to making extensions, as they could reply to the thread with problems, almost as if each thread was a development thread in a sense. You'd be able to look up an extension and see all the past problems with it

Again, just putting ideas out. I encourage you to defeat the purpose of my proposal, as coreplayer2 did (to one point, as far as build scripts and such go) considering I haven't been here long and don't know your way of doing things guys!

[Rich]

Hi GravityBox
In some cases if the source code hasn't changed you'll need to check older repositories to find them:
http://tinycorelinux.net/6.x/x86/tcz/src/
http://tinycorelinux.net/5.x/x86/tcz/src/
http://tinycorelinux.net/4.x/x86/tcz/src/
http://tinycorelinux.net/3.x/tcz/src/
http://tinycorelinux.net/2.x/tcz/src/

[curaga]

Please use the TCE news area, but mark the title as "underway", "in progress" etc. When submitted, you can ask a moderator to change it.