Open Source IDE?

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geoffcanyon
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Open Source IDE?

Post by geoffcanyon » Mon Jan 06, 2014 3:05 pm

Anyone know why the IDE isn't open source already? Why are we still submitting bugs with code examples instead of simply sending in an update?

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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by malte » Mon Jan 06, 2014 3:37 pm

I assume this is because it is tough to put stacks on GIT for collaboration. There is no good way yet to work collaboratively on a stack. Monte has done quite a bit of work there, however, it does not seem to get adopted yet by the mothership. Unless that happens, I do not see a good way to work on stacks, which is a pitty.

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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by geoffcanyon » Mon Jan 06, 2014 4:08 pm

The thing is: is anyone working on the properties palette right now? I only needed it for a half hour to make my update, and then it would be back in their hands, and able to align hundreds of objects without a coffee break.

Or looking at it a second way, why not give one of us partial ownership of the properties palette? Then we can edit, collect changes etc. and send back to them when we like where it is.

I like git as much as the next guy, but there was a time before it, and people managed to collaborate then as well. My first job out of college was as a code librarian, which basically meant I was git. I checked out code to people, careful not to check out a given routine to two people at the same time, and pestered them to give it back if they kept it too long.

There are pieces of the IDE that I would dearly love to fix.

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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by FourthWorld » Mon Jan 06, 2014 4:16 pm

Right now it seems the best way to handle such things is to provide replacement handlers in the body of a bug report for the issue. That will allow the team to review and likely include your fix in their normal bug-handling queue. Not as cool as using GIT, but will at least help keep things flowing for now.
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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by monte » Thu Jan 09, 2014 2:25 am

The IDE is open source and MIT licensed. Change it and share your changes how you like. The problem is the contribution and integration process. Trying to come up with a process would be the job of an integration manager which we don't appear to have for the IDE.

If people want to stick to the binary file format then probably git should be dropped in favor of some VCS with file locking and central control such as SVN with svn:needs-lock or mirror the github repo on runrev's servers and use gitolite's file locking features http://gitolite.com/gitolite/locking. It would basically mean RunRev would need to give RW access to the IDE stacks and it would be very difficult to revert changes if more changes were made on top of them as they would be in this kind of linear history. Also being binary files it would be difficult to see exactly what's changed. These reasons mean they might only want to trust a few people they have a long history with from the LC community to have this access and they end up in a position of potentially offending a customer by not giving them access... This is why DVCS like git is so much better for open source projects.

I will be starting a beta group for lcVCS this month so if RunRev want to use lcVCS then they can delegate an engineer to be involved if they want.

I have started to consider possibilities for contributions using lcVCS that avoid the majority of users having to use git. Basically stackFile distributions would have a custom property on the mainstack uVersion["SHA"] which is the commit hash. Someone could make a change to the stack then email it to the integration manager. The uVersion["SHA"] would then be used as the branch point for looking at the integration and merging it in if it all looks OK. It adds a bit of load to the integration manager and would be restricted to one contribution per stackFile between each LC version but given there aren't many in the LC community that have experience with VCS it may be a useful way to introduce someone to contributions. The same method could be used for other projects too and community members could offer to do these integrations and send the pull requests for people.

The IDE may also need some other special tools to deal with the fact that lcVCS importing the IDE it's running in is probably going to be issue prone... Deleting and recreating the home stack for instance would lose all externals from the environment including mergJSON which is a dependency...
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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by FourthWorld » Thu Jan 09, 2014 3:18 am

monte wrote:The IDE is open source and MIT licensed.
The MC IDE is MIT licensed, but I thought LC was GPL, no?
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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by monte » Thu Jan 09, 2014 3:24 am

The engine is GPL and the IDE is MIT
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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by Thierry » Thu Jan 09, 2014 9:53 am

Hi Monte,
The IDE is open source and MIT licensed.
and
The engine is GPL and the IDE is MIT
So, IDE is "MIT and GPL" or only MIT?

Mind you pointing out where we can find the official statement?

I'm lost :(

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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by FourthWorld » Thu Jan 09, 2014 4:43 pm

Thierry wrote:Mind you pointing out where we can find the official statement?
Thank you, Thierry - that was going to be my question.

I looked in the About box, but unfortunately the license info there is encumbered by a tediously-slow automated scroll at a fixed speed, and I didn't want to invest the time to wait for the LC-specific portions to appear (I should probably submit a patch for that, as it makes it impractical to actually use any of the info in the About box).
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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by monte » Thu Jan 09, 2014 10:53 pm

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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by FourthWorld » Thu Jan 09, 2014 11:43 pm

Thanks, Monte. Good move on their part.
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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by monte » Fri Jan 10, 2014 12:15 am

Someone who's name starts with M might have suggested it as even commercial derivatives would be beneficial to RunRev because people still need to license the commercial engine. Indeed commercial derivatives couldn't be distributed with an engine unless the developer makes a deal with RunRev and forcing FOSS derivatives to be GPL could bite them if they ever wanted to distribute them with the commercial engine themselves...

BTW I've just emailed Heather to ask if she can open up a Version Control forum under this open source section. I'll run the lcVCS beta there but it would also be a good place to discuss other options for collaboration and the version control aspects of working with the livecode repos. While I think using lcVCS or something like it is the way forward the extra work involved in keeping a project clean to avoid merge conflicts is probably not going to be everyone's cup of tea. Older projects need a decent chunk of work done to get them into that clean state too.
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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by Thierry » Fri Jan 10, 2014 7:29 am

FourthWorld wrote:
Thanks, Monte. Good move on their part.
Thanks Monte for the link.

But due to some neurologicgenetickarmalicensereading weakness,
can't see where this MIT license is stated. :shock:

Commercial license doesn't mean MIT, no? :roll:

Thanks for some enlightment. :idea:

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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by monte » Fri Jan 10, 2014 8:14 am

If you follow the link the but below the line ----- etc is the MIT license of the IDE stackFiles.
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Re: Open Source IDE?

Post by Thierry » Fri Jan 10, 2014 8:35 am

Got it!

Thanks Monte.
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