On 23.5.2005, at 16:58, Brendan Murphy wrote:
The basic problem that needs to be solved is that we need a common
format for version information that spans across multiple vendors
that can be eaisly incorporated into different build setups. Bjorn
has come up with a solution in his "Plugin Tool". The question is
will the rest of you out there adopt this? Bjorn mentions on his
web site that he has a set of build tools to support this. Bjorn,
would you please explain these tools to us.
Bjorn's plugin tool is pretty nice, but I think it needs certain
enhancements. I think it needs to support vendor name as a
seperate field so users can sort on this field. Also, it should
not assume a certain plugin directory, but allow the user to
select any plugin directory and open a new window with the
results. Also the user needs the ability to insert version
information into a plugin that lacks the prescribed version data
(this is to cover older plugins and plugins from authors that are
not aware of this convension). I am sure there are other
enhancements to be added and any comments here would be welcomed
since if we all adopt this tool, then we have to live with it.
Bjorn shows a banner ad when the plugin tool first starts up. I
personnally have no problem with this other than if it becomes a
group open source project, it seems out of place. Perhaps a better
thing to do is provide a small banner to all vendors who support
this tool thus giving it mind-share as the defacto standard.
We also need to see specifics on how it exactly works which means
that the plugin tool needs to be open sourced in order to protect
our collective rear ends. The same goes for the suppporting build
tools that are needed.
To make this work there needs to be buy-in from the plugin vendors
to follow the prescribed format and incorporate this information
into their plugins.
Anyone who wants can tap into the format we use and have used since
beginning of .rbx if they want.
The format is here bellow:
Its a file in the .rbx called VersionInfo.txt, and its format is like
this:
(The first line is optional, it is to support old versions of our
Reader application before we were using XML)
Version: 7.6.0
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<Version>
<Release>7</Release>
<Revision>6</Revision>
<Fix>0</Fix>
<Status>Release</Status>
<InternalStage>1</InternalStage>
<CountryCode>21</CountryCode>
<ShortString>StyleGrid 7.6</ShortString>
<LongString>StyleGrid 7.6 © 1999-2005 Einhugur Software</LongString>
</Version>
As for our build tools then they are not open, there are a few authors
that are closely related to us that use them. But they wont be made
available in any large scale since we clearly invested a lot in them
and their automation saves us many hours a week which gives us
advantage which we wont give up considering the huge investment in it.
So sorry those are not much open for discussion.
With the RB Plugin Tool then it is free for anyone to use. But we wont
be open sourcing it. It should be easy for anyone though to use the
spec (and add to the XML if more fields are wanted, and create their
own reader if they prefer their own reader).
There are at least 3 authors already using this format and have been
doing so for a long time.
--
______________________________________________________________________
Björn Eiríksson bjorn at einhugur dot com
Einhugur Software
http://www.einhugur.com/
______________________________________________________________________
Einhugur Software has sold its products in 47 countries world wide.
______________________________________________________________________
For support: support at einhugur dot com
To post on the maillist: einhugur at yahoogroups dot com
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