[chuck-users] Blob (was; Physics Engine In Chuck)

[Stephen Sinclair]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 3:11 PM, Adam Tindale <adamtindale at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I complete disagree with this idea. I have been using a fair bit of PD
> lately and it is very decentralized. It is very difficult to find patches
> and documentation. The PD-Extended is feature rich but is a real mess
> compared to Miller's vanilla version.
>
> ChucK needs some help but the answer is involvement. We have people who
> comment that parts are lacking. Great. What we need are people who will fix
> them. The source for everything is available and you can change it and send
> it back to the dev team. They have been great at merging patches that have
> been sent.
>
> What ChucK really needs is a chuck-users package that contains user
> generated UGENS and patches. GNU octave has a project called octave-forge
> that does this and it is very successful. There are some amazing users who
> have developed fantastic patches that have been kind enough to post their
> code for people. If we could put this all in one place then it would be easy
> to manage, update, and show to new users.
>
> The centralized, controlled nature of ChucK is one of the reasons that it is
> has been so successful. If you want to get involved a higher level, please
> do. As you point out, ChucK is great but we still have a lot of work to do
> until it becomes perfect. Let's build, not rebuild.

I'm not sure I'm clear on the difference between a "chuck-users"
package, as you mention, and what Kassen is talking about, regarding a
community edition?

Just to clarify, I think you have misunderstood the idea.  The fact
that ChucK uses a central CVS server means that it's impossible for
people to work together to create patches that can then be submitted
to the main ChucK team.

The idea was to create a place where we could integrate and test
works-in-progress without needing to get access to ChucK's CVS.
However it has always been a goal with this idea to make sure that all
developments are based on ChucK's upstream, so that the ChucK team
could then easily apply them.  The community edition would forever be
considered "unstable", and we wouldn't encourage people to use it for
real work.

In any case, if a "chuck-users" approach is preferred, where would you
suggest that be developed?

Anyways, if you think about it, the only actual difference between
creating a "community edition", and everyone just making their own git
repos and sharing patches on the list, is that the former case has a
web page to describe how to do it.


Steve