Contributing to the IDE

Geoff Canyon gcanyon at gmail.com
Fri Apr 20 04:29:05 EDT 2018


Thanks for the clear rationale. I'll take a shot at building the whole
thing tomorrow.

Two questions:

1. Are older versions closed to changes? If I find a bug in LC 8.1.8 (or
some update to it) is it pointless to fix the bug and submit a pull request?
2. Is it fair to submit IDE pull requests the same way I might for the
documentation? I.E., GitHub was perfectly happy to fork https://github.com/
livecode/livecode-ide/edit/develop/Toolset/palettes/menubar/revmenubar.
livecodescript for me, so it seems that if I update it, I could submit a
pull request for it, without having built anything. Obviously that beheads
a significant fraction of git's functionality, but it gets the job done,
correct?

Thanks,

gc

On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 1:08 AM, Mark Waddingham via use-livecode <
use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> On 2018-04-17 03:44, Geoff Canyon via use-livecode wrote:
>
>> Are there instructions available somewhere on how to set up the IDE in
>> GitHub so I can make changes and submit pull requests?
>>
>
> Not in the way you are trying to - no.
>
> Pretty much all our documentation is centered around the initial step
> which is getting the entire LiveCode system (engine and IDE) to build from
> source first. The main docs for that start in the LiveCode repo README -
> https://github.com/livecode/livecode/blob/develop/README.md.
>
> What you are asking for is slightly different: "How do I make it so that I
> can modify the IDE in a pre-built distribution and submit patches/PR from
> that".
>
> The main issue here (and perhaps the only issue) is that the HEAD versions
> of the version branches (release-* branches for specific releases,
> develop-* for the frontier of maintenance releases and develop for the next
> release) in the three main community repositories are all mutually
> dependent to a greater or lesser degree. Whilst you can try and use the
> develop HEAD version of the IDE with an engine built from develop-9.0 or
> earlier, the reality is that it might not work.
>
> Whilst it would be really really nice to have the IDE completely
> independent of a given engine version, that is still a dream we are quite a
> way from realizing.
>
> In order to submit a PR which has any chance of being accepted, you have
> to make sure it is submitted against the HEAD of the appropriate branch.
> Whilst you can certainly checkout just the IDE repository, and then
> redirect the Toolset folder from within a LiveCode distribution to use it -
> you might find it does not work as the engine version required to run that
> version of the Toolset (from the HEAD of the branch) might be 'newer' (and
> as-yet unavailable as a built distribution to download) than that which you
> have.
>
> To cut a long story short: right now I'd strongly advise against thinking
> of the engine and IDE as separate things if you want to contribute to the
> LiveCode project because for the most part they are too mutually dependent.
> As it stands, you really need to build the LiveCode repo from source on
> your chosen development platform - as that's the only way you can guarantee
> that you can submit patches against the current HEAD of any of the branches.
>
> Warmest Regards,
>
> Mark.
>
> --
> Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
> LiveCode: Everyone can create apps
>
>
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