Talk:Next newsletter

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Revision as of 10:35, 3 July 2011 by Hooray (talk | contribs) (add section SNAPSHOT RELEASES)
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This is a template for future newsletters, please feel free to edit/improve!


Magagazine.png
Welcome to the FlightGear Newsletter!
Please help us write the next edition!
Enjoy reading the latest edition!


We would like to emphasize that the monthly newsletter can not live without the contributions of FlightGear users and developers. Everyone with a wiki account (free to register) can edit the newsletter and every contribution is welcome. So if you know about any FlightGear related projects such as for example updated scenery or aircraft, please do feel invited to add such news to the newsletter.

Development news

Snapshot releases

Some of you might know that James and Gene have spent a lot of time assembling a "nightly build server" for the FlightGear project: FlightGear Build Server.

This monitors the git repository for any source code changes and then spawns builds for windows, linux, and the mac.

You can find the build server here: http://flightgear.simpits.org:8080/

This is really great work and a huge contribution to the FlightGear project.

Unfortunately, to run a nightly build from the build server, you still have to pull the latest data tree from the git repository. That's not all that hard once you work through the details, but it's a bit "fiddly" for some folks.

So Curt has been playing around with creating a developer's snapshot release which would be similar to our official release.

It's one big setup.exe that includes all the programs and the data. We are hopeful that this will eventually make the current development version of FlightGear more accessible for "joe average" users which would then in term hopefully give us more feedback and bug reports ahead of our official release.

None of this would be possible without the "hudson" build server that Gene and James set up.

There are a couple things that are done with this snapshot package:

  • a unique app name of the form: FlightGear YYYYMMDD is assigned so you can have multiple versions installed concurrently and they don't step on each other and don't step on the official release. If people maintain multiple snapshots installed on their systems, that might help narrow down when a bug was introduced.
  • The openal installer "oalinst.exe" is included and vcredist_x86.exe ... neither of these may be required in the long term if we can just ship the needed dll's, but that probably needs further testing.

Does it basically work? Are there any major packaging blunders? Please note, FlightGear bugs and feature request should still be handled through normal channels. But I am interested in packaging issues right now.

To provide feedback please us this forum thread: http://flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=10488

For downloads please see:

Nasal for newbies

New software tools and projects

FlightGear addons and mods

In the hangar

New aircraft

Updated aircraft

Liveries

Scenery corner

Airports

Aircraft of the month

Airport of the month

Screenshot of the month

Suggested flights

Aircraft reviews

Wiki updates

New articles

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New aircraft articles

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Most popular newsletters

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Community news

FlightGear on youtube

New tutorials and screencasts

Forum news

Multiplayer

Virtual airlines

FlightGear events

Useful links

And finally ...

Contributing

One of the regular thoughts expressed on the FlightGear forums is "I'd like to contribute but I don't know how to program, and I don't have the time". Unfortunately, there is a common mis-conception that contributing requires programming and lots of free time. In fact, there are a huge range of ways to contribute to the project without needing to write code or spending days working on something.

For ideas on starting to contribute to FlightGear, you may want to check out: Volunteer.

Call for volunteers

  • The OpenRadar project is looking for a new maintainer.
  • The FGFSPM (FlightGear Package Manager) is looking for a new maintainer.

Did you know