has the mod community considered using SVN to keep mods up to date??

[agentexeider]

Greetings, I don't know if this has been asked, but I was wondering if the community had ever considered using SVN to keep mods up to date, and making updating them easier.

"Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after the command name svn) is a software versioning and revision control system distributed under an open source license. Developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation." - Wikipedia

the general idea is that, developers would upload the mod to a repository, and give out the address to this repository, sometimes with a general username and pass: anon anon.

this address and login info(if used by that provider), would be put into SVN clients which would download the repository to the client's machine. once done, future updates would simply be performed by clicking update in the windows context menu (the right click menu), which would update the appropriate files according to the repository that has been set by the mod developer. The power of this tool cannot be understated. All the mod developer has to do once they update their mod, is update the repository with a simple click, and then tell people to update their versions, also with a simple click.

Imagine all the mod makers on this site and how quickly they could distribute updates to their mods, when a new version of KSP comes out. Imagine how quick YOU the player could update ALL of your mods, with a simple CLICK of the update button, each repository would check it's respective addresses for updates and update accordingly.

No more having to hunt down the newest update on the forum, no more waiting for the developer to upload it to space port just to get a code fix.

Just one and done.

There are alot of gaming communities that use this, Garry's Mod for example to great effect, and I was wondering if KSP Modders have thought of using it. Heck even the KSP devs are using it, have you tried the patcher tool recently, reminds a lot of SVN to be honest. I think the modding community would be served well by using SVN.

just something to think about.

-Æ

[Majiir]

Subversion is primarily source control software, and it's sub-par at that. Many mods use some kind of source control, usually Git but sometimes Mercurial or SVN. Typically this is for source code only because source control systems are ill-suited for distributing binary assets. (Changes in text are easy to identify, store and compress, but changes in binaries will inflate the repository.) Source control systems often require downloading the entire repository history, too. It's the wrong tool for the job.

Since 0.21 enabled System.IO access, we might see more auto-update or check-for-update schemes.

[Mr Shifty]

since 0.21 enabled system.io access, we might see more auto-update or check-for-update schemes.

it did?!?!? (And did you know that the forums automagically lower-case your post if you make it in all caps?)

[agentexeider]

Subversion is primarily source control software, and it's sub-par at that. Many mods use some kind of source control, usually Git but sometimes Mercurial or SVN. Typically this is for source code only because source control systems are ill-suited for distributing binary assets. (Changes in text are easy to identify, store and compress, but changes in binaries will inflate the repository.) Source control systems often require downloading the entire repository history, too. It's the wrong tool for the job.

Since 0.21 enabled System.IO access, we might see more auto-update or check-for-update schemes.

I see the Garry's Mod community use to great effect, I can update my Gmod mods in seconds vs the minutes to hours trying to track all of my mods down.

-Æ

[Rich]

Just because you can use a version control system to keep your mods updated doesn't meant that you should. As Majiir already stated, storing binary files in a version control repository is a crap idea. As the internal layout of a binary is not amenable to delta based storage, and thus causes the size of the repository to increase rapidly. In addition to this, it excludes any users who are not technically savvy enough to employ version control software for updating. There are better, more general solutions in the mix, which will emerge as the KSP Network (specifically the SpacePort) and Modding Support (the recent addition of System.IO) both mature.

[Nuke]

i tried doing this with mods i made for other games. it doesn't really help out all that much for the lone modder. now if you were part of a big mod team it kinda makes sense. it can manage all your configs and your code base. art assets are more troublesome though.