[ANN] IDE Development Option

[Richard Gaskin]

Scott Rossi wrote:

> I've watched a fair amount of discourse fly on the list regarding "open
> source this" and "SourceForge that", and I'm wondering if it might be time
> to just dive into some kind of development option.  So, I went ahead tried
> to do something, for better or worse.
> 
> I took apart all the substacks of the MC 2.5 environment (as many as I
> could), placed them all on a server in separate folders, and assembled a
> first pass at a stack management system.  The stacks have been named using
> typical "copy of..." (MC standard) and stored on the server this way to
> avoid potential naming conflicts once downloaded and run within MC.
> 
> The stack manager can be accessed via your message box here:
> 
> go stack url "http://www.i-view.net/tm_stack_manager.mc"
> 
> If it works correctly, you should be able to get a list of available files
> on the server, locate and download stacks to your drive (you must specify a
> working directory in which to save downloaded files), and then upload the
> edited stacks back onto the server.  Names that are grayed out are
> unavailable.  Please be aware that if many folks try this at the same time
> they may end up being unable to access stacks as there is a simple mechanism
> in place to prevent multiple editors working on a single stack.
> 
> Before the complaints ensue, no, this is not a full blown content management
> system, and no, there is not extensive error checking -- this is a first
> attempt that is designed to officially allow one person at a time to edit a
> portion of the IDE.  It's a simple feature set -- "check something out, work
> on it, and check something in when you're done with it."  The next step is
> for someone to create an IDE compiler that assembles all the stacks into a
> single editor.
> 
> If this seems useful to folks, let's talk about how this can be
> enhanced/developed/customized/etc.  Maybe we can start getting some work
> done.

A way nifty gadget, Scott.

What would it take to enhance it to also work on substacks?  While some have
expressed an interest in even greater granularity, I think substacks are
probably enough for a good many people.  If this tool was enhanced to do
that it could be used by nearly everyone, regardless of how their stacks are
architected.

As for the simultaneous login issue, I think that one's easy to get around
by having a CGI that creates a file while it's working and deletes it before
exiting.  This way any second instance can check for the file with polling
at some reasonably small interval until the file is gone.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site
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