AAO goes open-source NOW !
One month and a half ago, I announced that AAO would be going open source shortly. Well, shortly was not so short after all as I have been very busy, but it serves to highlight the need for others to support AAO development, and here it is at last.
I now unveil before your amazed eyes the new bitbucket public repository :
AAO Game Creation Engine
This repository contains all code and development history of AAOv6 since its start in 2010.
How to test AAO on my machine ?
This past month, I have also been working to make it much simpler for contributors to test it out.
In addition to the full integrated AAO installation (which requires a tied phpBB forum installation, and all the corresponding technical prerequisites), I introduce two simpler ways of testing changes :
- Static testing
As long as your changes only affect the editor or player interface, you'll be able to test them without even setting up a PHP server. If you use Firefox, you won't even need an HTTP server either : open the "editor.html" or "player.html" pages, and that's it ! - Mocked testing
If you don't want to worry about a phpBB forum install or any database management by yourself, but still want to test trial creation and saving, series and such, you can use mocked testing. If you have a PHP server installed (with SQLite3 support, which should be the default nowadays), you'll have it set up in seconds and it will enable you to perform everything a single user can do on AAO.
How to contribute to the AAO engine ?
First, here are the things you will need to contribute. Don't worry, it's all free
- A bitbucket.org account
You can create a bitbucket account in seconds; even less if you have a Google account. - Git software on your computer
Git is the source control management tool used by AAO. You can download Git for your computer for free.
In order to contribute to AAO, you will need to use the fork and pull request mechanism.
The basic principle is the following :
- You create a "fork" of the AAO repository, which is a clone belonging to your own bitbucket account.
- You do all development on your own fork : the AAO repository will remain untouched during this phase.
- When you think your development is over, you create a "pull request" from your fork to the AAO repository. This means you are asking me to review the changes you made and integrate them into AAO.
- While reviewing, I will probably make some comments, and ask you to change some details. Then, when I'm happy with all of it, I will integrate it into AAO.
Therefore if you intend to start a big development, you should tell me about it beforehand : if it's something I fundamentally disagree with, it's better to know it before you spend hours on it !
So... what now ?
You can start toying around with the code right now, and get used to bitbucket and git.
I will be very busy for the next week, so I probably won't be able to help much, but from May 24th onwards I will also try to find the time to answer all your questions regarding AAO development. Be it about general organisation of the AAO code, specific details you wouldn't understand, or how to contribute.
Shortly, I will also enable two bitbucket tools on the AAO repository :
- A bug tracker
Instead of asking Enthalpy to maintain a list of bugs on the forums, it's high time we move on to a better solution. Bitbucket provides a bug tracker which will enable everyone to search and report issues, and the dev will be able to quickly review the pending issues and propose fixes. - A development wiki
As I've been developing AAO by myself from the start, I've never written any technical documentation, so I expect you will have some trouble diving in the code. I will soon enable a wiki where all developers can document whatever is useful for AAO development, to help other devs.
I'm counting on all the brilliant developers among you
That's all Folks!