Template talk:Repo link

needs to be updated for different protocols

specifically for git:// - which will help centralize all repo URLs - e.g. to replace all URLs with a corresponding template, instead of having git://git.code.sf.net/p/flightgear/simgear everywhere - we should probably introduce a proto parameter that defaults to http/https and which can be overridden so that "git" can be specified. We want to avoid having to manually update all related articles in the future (if/when another repository needs to be moved) - e.g. [1].

--Hooray (talk) 17:10, 4 April 2015 (EDT)

Sorry that I do not understand you, but do you mean the URL in the template or URLs spread out in articles literally?

—Johan G (Talk | contribs) 18:34, 4 April 2015 (EDT)

the latter - currently, we cannot use either of those templates to update the "building FG" docs accordingly, many of which contain now wrong links to the repositories - especially those using the git protocol - so it would be better to either have 3 templates, or one parameterized template returning the requested repository URL, including the proper format - so that we can use {{SimGear repo|proto=git}} or something like that. Otherwise, we will have to update dozens of references manually whenever there's a similar change (thanks for your recent changes though!). Just imagine, repositories would have to change again some time soon - we would have to manually update all URLs again. So let's better use a template for such things, analogous to how the "Next Newsletter" template serves as a "pointer" and can be easily changed, without having to update any locations using it. --Hooray (talk) 18:48, 4 April 2015 (EDT)

Ah, I think I get it now. In other words {{repo link}} is just as much maintenance as having bare URLs, but if adding more specific links, like your {{SimGear repo}} example the maintenance would more or less be only changing that template.

If so that is one case where a definitively see a meta template used by other link templates as useful. The repo specific templates would in this context use {{repo link}} to simplify them.

Repo specific links could also be more tailored to their needs, for example possibly using unnamed parameters for the parameters that are more or less always used (in essence less typing, I'm a lazy dude ;-) and have parameters more relevant to the context, for example {{FGAddon repo | B-1B | Systems/b1b-autopilot.xml | rev=3}}.

—Johan G (Talk | contribs) 12:10, 5 April 2015 (EDT)

correct, I am basically thinking along the lines of using/generalizing existing templates to generalize our "hard-coded" (for the lack of a better term) repository URLs in pretty much all wiki articles - so that updating repository URLs in the future will be mainly a matter of changing 2-3 templates. Which is why I suggested to also add support for different protocols, so that those templates can also be used for instructions on cloning/pulling using non-default (non-http) protocols. This would also allow us to introduce meta templates for document clone/update/pull instructions using a single template for different front-ends - possibly even including annotated screen shots. We kinda started preparing this a while ago by introducing templates like these:

* http://wiki.flightgear.org/Template:Git_clone

* http://wiki.flightgear.org/Template:Git_checkout

* http://wiki.flightgear.org/Template:Git_push

Once we adapt the new repo link template, we could easily use that for also maintaining everything easily. And the corresponding clone/checkout/push and pull templates could also contain instructions for different front-ends (think git command line vs. TortoiseGit), to help generalize our docs, especially for people on Windows/Mac OSX not as familiar with CLI environments.--Hooray (talk) 12:59, 5 April 2015 (EDT)