Aircraft attic
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Status
Torsten has just created the /attic/Aircraft folder in FGAddon. https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/fgaddon/HEAD/tree/attic/ This was the technical part which was easy. Now comes the tricky one: name those aircraft that should go there :-)[1]
Background
there had been some discussion about having an "attic" sub dir[2], like an airplane boneyard, which is exactly how the *attic*, or whatever you want to call it should be. A resting place for useful birds, just not everyday flyers. [3]
The value in the attic is solely as a replacement for straight out aircraft deletion.[4]
Only a handful of aircraft in the present trunk would qualify for the attic; these are aircraft that are not only unmaintained but also of poor quality and have a direct replacement. A couple of examples:
- tu154 (the tu154b is in the top 50 aircraft)
- Lockheed1049 (the Lockheed1049h is in the top 50 aircraft)
- possibly the E3B (the EC-137D which is part of the 707 package is the top 1 aircraft :))
- possibly at least one of the two Lockheed P-38 Ligntnings (Lockheed-P38 or P-38-Lightning)
- possibly one of the Lockheed-SR71 or SR71-BlackBird [5]
One of the largest turn off's for any genre of game/sim/etc. is the lack of an unfinished product. You certainly don't invest time into something that is unfinished. With the attic, it allows FG to clean up. It certainly does not remove any hard work done by past users, just the opposite. No craft DELETED, still usable from attic and No cruft for END USERS that don't care.[6]
the attic seems like a good place to move long-unmaintained aircraft *when* a newer better version shows up. An attic allows us to keep a record of the original, provides a a place where it can be readily accessed, but the newer version becomes the default that most people will see.[7]
we should define an ‘attic' subdir of fgaddon for this scenario, and package any such aircraft in a different, non-default hangar. I agree there’s good reasons to keep older versions sometimes but where the older version in unmaintained for several years, and the new version is clearly better, keeping both just causes a poorer end-user experience. [8] we need an attic subdir or similar to handle aircraft[9] that are removed/replaced with better maintained versions [10]
We currently use the standard directory layout:
- /trunk
- /branches
- /tags
where /trunk contains the Aircraft folder with all our aircraft (duh) and /branches contains folders for each single release. /tags is empty as we do not tag in FGAddon.
We could easily create a folder /attic/Aircraft and use "svn move" to shift some aircraft there. Maintenance-wise this is an easy task, history will be kept and it's close to no overhead.[11]
we should only use the attic where there is an obsolete older version of an aircraft we want to have available (though svn history would provide this as well). We should differentiate between distribution and the development repository itself. There is a case for applying aircraft rating to whether we distribute an aircraft of not. For example we could decide to be quite draconian and not distribute unrated aircraft, or apply a poor default rating to and only distribute aircraft with a non-ero rating in at least one area to prod people to rate aircraft.[12]
Criteria
concern would be what criteria would you use to shift aircraft here, and not have them available for downlaod? Should it be strictly used as a trash can, to shift aircraft here instead of deleting them? Or are we going to cull the low quality bottom end. In any case, I know of a recently deleted aircraft that could be shifted here with a simple 'svn cp' command.[13]
what is the point of a rating system if you don't use it? If we have it to increase *end user experience*, then we should enforce its use or park the aircraft in the attic till it's been fixed. If a developer *really* cares he will add the ratings, a minor ache compared to full on development.[14]
can we form a consensus like:
- attic for aircraft which we'd otherwise delete, i.e. development that is replaced by a newer version of the same aircraft (unless the maintainer of the old version is around and objects)
- don't link attic and quality control, rather:
- rating is good for end user experience, require a rating by someone (preferably the maintainer, but if none is available someone else) if an aircraft ought to appear in stable release download [15]
Issues
worried that this moving about of aircraft will break existing SVN checkouts and git svn clones of individual aircraft (that are moved).[16]