Automagic svn updating for mods

[Forboding Angel]

Look I realize the amount of crap this would cause, but hear me out. I know this is the way that ca downloader works and my idea is a little different.

Is there any way that spring could piggyback onto tortoisesvn or some sort of program like that (or perhaps built into the engine) that would download revisions at intervals set by the user?

THis would make patches a total breeze. I know there are obvious downsides to it... My question is: Is it doable in a way that would work?

What I'm thinking is that a user could jsut enter an svn url to "Install" a mod. It would be a very bold step imo and one that might be worth the trouble of doing it.

[thesleepless]

seems reasonable, wouldn't need to use tortoise, just make the downloader app use svn directly. but then it needs to compile it into a sd7 or sdz.
so to update it'd need to extract the sd7, then svn update, then recompress it.

[Tobi]

AFAIK BD and det are already working on a pooled archive download / update format.

At least Spring engine supports .sdp, Spring data pool, already.

This way you get the advantages of incremental updates for mods (like CA has), without the disadvantages of using SVN for this purpose.

Full installs are already supposed to be a breeze using SpringDownloader or the downloader functionality included in SpringLobby, although it still has some bugs.

[AF]

spring data pool?

[Tobi]

Yes, basically there's a big folder (the pool) with files named after their hash (MD5, if I recall correctly).

A .sdp mod then contains a single file, which is a binary file listing filename,pool hash,crc32 hash of all files in the mod.

This means when getting new version of a mod you only need to download the files that are changed, and also you don't have to bother to figure out which files changed, as modder.

(Disclaimer: That's what I understood from it, it may be inaccurate.)

[Forboding Angel]

wow, that's pretty neat tobi. I'm glad someone else thought of it. I'm ok with the lobby doing it, however, I am extremely not cool with an external app (e.g. springdownloader) being the only way of doing it.

Lets be honest, having 4 apps open just when opening the lobby is a lil silly.

[det]

So, you are willing to run tortoise svn as some really awkward update program, but not SD

(Tobi describes sdp mostly correctly)

btw: the way cadownloader has almost always worked is what Tobi describes about sdp. The only difference now is that the engine supports it natively, so no need to zip as final step of update.

[Forboding Angel]

No Det, I meant using the tortoise engine or base or whatever it's called. It would be retarded to expect normal users to use tortoise.

The whole point is so that spring would do the updating for you, and patches would be tiny.

[Tobi]

det/BD: How's progress on integrating the updating process into SL by the way?

[det]

I'm doing no work in integrating sdp downloader into SL. Last I heard from BD, network code was working and it just needed a GUI.

[Regret]

Only thing that bothers me as a player with CA-like update scheme is the replay watching. You have to (almost always) download another version if you want to watch an uploaded replay. Same goes for watching your older replays.

[CarRepairer]

Only thing that bothers me as a player with CA-like update scheme is the replay watching. You have to (almost always) download another version if you want to watch an uploaded replay. Same goes for watching your older replays.

It's refreshing to hear a legitimate complaint about CA's rapid development scheme. However, the test revisions are for serious playtesting only, not intended for the public at large - even if said public doesn't exist yet. Stables are released less than once a month (except in the previous case but that was an exception) thus you'll have little trouble viewing replays for these stables for all your recently played games.

[smoth]

but because it is an svn system you can get that version unlike other projects.

[lurker]

With sdp you can have every revision with less than double the space of a single zip. The only real issue here is lobbies and spring not using the version tag as a hierarcy, instead making a huge mod list.