Kerbal Stuff, an open-source Space Port replacement

[Justin Kerbice]

How to make people aware about kerbal stuff ?

This way:

Without forgetting the ad-o-copter, a flying advertising around KSC:

I have used my adpanel mod and a dedicated texture I could upload if some people want it.

In a true multiplayer game, it could be fun and useful to see such ads orbiting bodies .

Edited July 2, 2014 by Justin Kerbice
added ad-o-copter pic

[toadicus]

Is there a way to upload files via a command line utility?

[Virtualgenius]

Why would you want to do this ^^^ they make gui's for a reason

[Justin Kerbice]

Why would you want to do this ^^^ they make gui's for a reason

The other side of the coin is GUI are slow and boring for repetitive tasks, like uploading 10 mods at once.

CLI interface allow scripting of such bunch of similar tasks.

@toadicus: no need fr a CLI, you can use web scripting tool like Perl with a module like WWW::Mechanize, you just need to know the right parameters to each POST request made.

[Red Iron Crown]

Site is currently giving 500 Internal Server Errors. Doing some maintenance?

[SirCmpwn]

Site is currently giving 500 Internal Server Errors. Doing some maintenance?

No, it's just that the aforementioned changes that would probably cause bugs did indeed cause some bugs.

[SirCmpwn]

http://beta.kerbalstuff.com/does-not-exist

404 page to go along with error handling that should supposedly catch those errors better.

[toadicus]

The other side of the coin is GUI are slow and boring for repetitive tasks, like uploading 10 mods at once.

CLI interface allow scripting of such bunch of similar tasks.

@toadicus: no need fr a CLI, you can use web scripting tool like Perl with a module like WWW::Mechanize, you just need to know the right parameters to each POST request made.

I maintain a common tool library for all of my mods, and when it gets updated during one mod update, I have to refresh the other mod downloads as well. My current solution uses a little bash script to update the library in my other mods and re-copy them to my private server, which I currently use for all of my hosting. I like the idea behind Kerbal Stuff and want to host my mods there to support that idea and SirCmpwn's effort, but if I have to browse to the site and update three mods every time I have an update for one of them, it reintroduces a lot of extra work that I have currently solved with a single command invocation.

I'm aware of various ways to write scripts to operate websites, but I know that some uploader designs make efforts to thwart such automation in order to prevent abuse. So, I suppose a more pertinent question might be: is the site designed to permit and/or facilitate the use of automated web scripting?

[WinkAllKerb'']

haha would give me a good reason to get my telescope out of my cave Toad

(here sky is too smogey to enjoy stars @ nights :/ haven't used it for like 20 years or so ...)

[SirCmpwn]

I maintain a common tool library for all of my mods, and when it gets updated during one mod update, I have to refresh the other mod downloads as well. My current solution uses a little bash script to update the library in my other mods and re-copy them to my private server, which I currently use for all of my hosting. I like the idea behind Kerbal Stuff and want to host my mods there to support that idea and SirCmpwn's effort, but if I have to browse to the site and update three mods every time I have an update for one of them, it reintroduces a lot of extra work that I have currently solved with a single command invocation.

I'm aware of various ways to write scripts to operate websites, but I know that some uploader designs make efforts to thwart such automation in order to prevent abuse. So, I suppose a more pertinent question might be: is the site designed to permit and/or facilitate the use of automated web scripting?

I agree with you wrt updating from the command line. I have plans to build an API for Kerbal Stuff and other folks have plans to build mod managers based on this. I suggest keeping your eye out and making your feelings known to those projects.

[Justin Kerbice]

I maintain a common tool library for all of my mods, and when it gets updated during one mod update, I have to refresh the other mod downloads as well. My current solution uses a little bash script to update the library in my other mods and re-copy them to my private server, which I currently use for all of my hosting. I like the idea behind Kerbal Stuff and want to host my mods there to support that idea and SirCmpwn's effort, but if I have to browse to the site and update three mods every time I have an update for one of them, it reintroduces a lot of extra work that I have currently solved with a single command invocation.

allow me to say that such design is bad, why not putting out the common part as a small dependency (ex: "my_common_lib") and all your mods need this little common lib, so you don't have to manage it any more yourself. You can use the KSP version checks made for the toolbar mod, I guess, to check your own lib version and display a warning.

I know many people are "dumb" (it's not put here as an insult), as for example, many people in suggestion forum ask for mod features to be stock to don't have to install one or more mod (), but "dumbproof software" is already a "failure before done concept" as Microsoft and others companies shows. The only way to get rid of that is to provide some sort of an auto-installer, which can be also seen as an offence by some people because it could send some data to a website etc... (as Majiir's modstatistics recently shows).

[WinkAllKerb'']

I know many people are "dumb" (it's not put here as an insult)

i suggest you could say that they evolve in different(s) expertise(s) domain than yours or at least the one(s) you know, might work Alice else you'll start being way too much ironic and sarcastic like me oh and it's always cool to aquier new expertise experience in any domains usefull for the communities.

That being said, if i had time i could learn another computer 'languages' and it's caracters ... one more *shrug* (hum nevermind i'll stick to old #FF way faster)

[toadicus]

allow me to say that such design is bad, why not putting out the common part as a small dependency (ex: "my_common_lib") and all your mods need this little common lib, so you don't have to manage it any more yourself. You can use the KSP version checks made for the toolbar mod, I guess, to check your own lib version and display a warning.

I know many people are "dumb" (it's not put here as an insult), as for example, many people in suggestion forum ask for mod features to be stock to don't have to install one or more mod (), but "dumbproof software" is already a "failure before done concept" as Microsoft and others companies shows. The only way to get rid of that is to provide some sort of an auto-installer, which can be also seen as an offence by some people because it could send some data to a website etc... (as Majiir's modstatistics recently shows).

There are a lot of ways that I could address the issue. I'd really prefer to avoid requiring an extra download, because that really is a pretty confusing step: "Mod X has an update! Yay! Don't forget to read the changelog to check if its dependency Mod Y also got an update. If it did, make sure you go get it first!" That's not work that I feel like forcing upon my users, and lacking an automated mod manager setup that would let me assign Mod Y as a dependency and have it auto downloaded, this option mandates that the user be responsible for the extra work.

The next best option would be for me to completely re-architect the library into a singleton format (currently it's all static classes), do a version election in the singleton logic, and write version numbers into my .dll files. The big problem with that is that the library includes a lot of extension methods which MUST be static, so I'd also need to completely refactor all of the code that depends on the extension methods in the library to call utility methods from a singleton instead. This is a bunch of work for me and requires me to forgo the use of a nice convention of the C# language, and I'd prefer to avoid such restrictions.

After that, I can look at things like auto-downloading the library, or even loading the assembly direct from the web every time a user starts up KSP. But that will cause a Major Kerfuffle with some subset of the userbase that I'd rather avoid.

TL;DR: I know my current solution isn't ideal, but all of the other solutions have big downsides as well. If Kerbal Stuff takes off and gets a good, cross-platform mod manager that will respect dependencies as I and many here seem hopeful it will, I will distribute the library separately and let the mod manager do the extra work for users that aren't willing or able to do so. Until then, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing and if I can use Kerbal Stuff with my current solution until a mod manager gets developed, I will.

[frizzank]

Love the site it's tons better than curse already. Thank you for doing this.

I have two questions.

How do you plan on vetting mods or authors? Its rare in KSP but some scrupulous individuals could use it to distribute some really nasty things.

If its possible it would be nice if an installer could be integrated with Kerbal Stuff to give people a truly one button install, much in the same way steam does its workshop?

[mythic_fci]

If its possible it would be nice if an installer could be integrated with Kerbal Stuff to give people a truly one button install, much in the same way steam does its workshop?

To both the OP and frizzank, I might be able to help in a way. I could create an extraction program that would ask for the KSP root install then extract the files to the appropriate folders, but it would be outside of the Kerbal Stuff website.

[SirCmpwn]

Tiny update:

Added nag-your-friends links, made other small changes.

How do you plan on vetting mods or authors? Its rare in KSP but some scrupulous individuals could use it to distribute some really nasty things.

We have moderation tools in place to get rid of abusive users. We'll extend it further if need be.

If its possible it would be nice if an installer could be integrated with Kerbal Stuff to give people a truly one button install, much in the same way steam does its workshop?

I would like to do that, but I won't start working on it until after the rest of the site is done. To all those offering to help with that, please be patient. I have a design in mind for that feature.

[SirCmpwn]

Started working on the API. Wrote the search endpoint: http://beta.kerbalstuff.com/api/search?query=fasa

When I got that in place, I started working on a neat little thing.

[Ippo]

When I got that in place, I started working on a neat little thing.

Neat indeed Are you planning to evolve it into a sort of mod manager? Because the next logical step would be "./stuff install fasa" ...

[SirCmpwn]

Neat indeed Are you planning to evolve it into a sort of mod manager? Because the next logical step would be "./stuff install fasa" ...

I had something like that in mind, yes. Keep the hype engines at low throttle, though, I'm working on the rest of the website more seriously than I'm working on this.

[Justin Kerbice]

Started working on the API. Wrote the search endpoint: http://beta.kerbalstuff.com/api/search?query=fasa

When I got that in place, I started working on a neat little thing.

Looks good, I can't not think about a Debian-like utils, like aptitude (or more simpler apt-get) + apt-cache (search for package in title/desc) / apt-file (search for file inside a package)

[zengei]

I had something like that in mind, yes. Keep the hype engines at low throttle, though, I'm working on the rest of the website more seriously than I'm working on this.

Cool, a standardized package format wouldn't be too difficult. Basically a zip file with folders rooted at the KSP directory (i.e. how most mods are distributed anyway) plus a metadata file.

I'm a big fan of the simplicity and power of Arch Linux's package format expressed in PKGBUILD files. Being able to express (hard and soft) dependency and conflict relationships between packages would be a big boon for user friendliness. Also being able to express more complex relationships like provides or replaces would help forks and continuations. When I looked into this a while ago there was even an effort to use pacman directly.

Unfortunately that level of robustness is a lot of effort (Linux package managers have years and years of development from multiple contributors), but it's relatively straight forward to add over time. A KSP package manager would also have the advantage that the packager would also likely be the creator, which reduces the need to e.g. be able to build from source and support exotic installation procedures.

What language is that example written in? I'm assuming Python like the rest of Kerbal Stuff?

[nli2work]

I'm getting 500 error when I attempt to edit cropping on header image, then 404 upon refreshing the 500 error page... and after that the new mod entry is not found in my profile nor in browsing. Not sure if it's uploaded on the server or not. I tried it twice before stopping.

[zengei]

What language is that example written in? I'm assuming Python like the rest of Kerbal Stuff?

Nevermind, found it on your GitHub. C# nice, I'll probably fork and play around with it.

[SirCmpwn]

I'm getting 500 error when I attempt to edit cropping on header image, then 404 upon refreshing the 500 error page... and after that the new mod entry is not found in my profile nor in browsing. Not sure if it's uploaded on the server or not. I tried it twice before stopping.

I see your errors, I'll look into it. Damn header offset is a pain to work with.

[SirCmpwn]

I implemented "instant click", which means that Kerbal Stuff now starts loading pages once it thinks you're going to click links to them, but before you actually click them. The effect of this is that browsing the site now feels pretty much instantaneous. It's a big change, though, so please let me know if you notice anything new that has been broken because of this.

I'm getting 500 error when I attempt to edit cropping on header image, then 404 upon refreshing the 500 error page... and after that the new mod entry is not found in my profile nor in browsing. Not sure if it's uploaded on the server or not. I tried it twice before stopping.

Fixed this issue, thanks for reporting it.