Zugg Software :: View topic

Apprentice Joined: 08 Dec 2005 Posts: 108

Has the ability to upload packages to the zuggsoft library been enabled yet? If so how do I do it, I haven't been able to figure it out.
Thank you.

P.S Zugg, great job on another great piece of software

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

yes it has.

Go into the settings editor, up in the toolbar, there is a dropdown list of all of your packages. Select the package you're wanting to upload and hit the little package icon next to it. That'll give you the screen you need to start the upload process.

Zugg, could a link to this screen be put in the module properties? Otherwise, it is a little hard to find.

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 4:51 pm

Once you're on the Package Properties menu, you also have to click the button at the bottom "Upload to library" to start the process.

And I agree, it should be more obvious. I think the most intuitive place would be in the package library. File -> upload a package -> browse dialog or something.

Apprentice Joined: 08 Dec 2005 Posts: 108

That worked great. Next question now that I have uploaded a package, how do i update it?
Eddie

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:29 pm

Upload it with the new version number and create a duplicate (the version number is displayed, so there shouldn't be any confusion about which is the latest). If you want, you can then delete the older version.

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:17 pm

You shouldn't upload a new version and delete the old one. That will lead to a lot of crap in the package library if people don't clean up their old versions. The recommended way is to just click the Package Properties button to view your package in the package editor, then you will see a "View in Library" button at the bottom. This will display the library record for your package. You can then update the version field, edit the "Whats New" information, and then just Upload it to the library again to replace the old version.

I know I still need to write documentation for the Package Library, but what's important to remember is that each package is assigned a unique ID number. This allows you to update a package (and even change it's name) without effecting your unique package ID value.

When someone uses your package, it's being used by ID number. This allows the package library to tell you if a package you are using has been updated or not.

If you create a completely new package and then delete the old one, this will screw up people who are using your old package, because it will get deleted from the package library.

This works the same as stuff like Extensions for Firefox. As an author you don't upload multiple copies of your Extension with different version number...you just update your existing extension. Same thing with CMUD.

Anyway, the quick answer to the question of "how to I update it" is to just click the Upload Package button again. CMUD knows which package ID you are uploading and will either add it as a new package, or update an existing package (assuming your login information matches the same user info that created the first version of the package)

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:24 pm

That makes much more sense. It'd be a nice extra if CMUD automatically filled in the version number from the package properties.

That stuff about package ID numbers is very interesting, though... does that mean that it'd be possible to prevent users from using your packages if they were downloaded from a private area of the package library and they were denied permission for whatever reason? Or to prevent users from sharing your uploaded package amongst themselves if they haven't downloaded it from the library? I expect the answer will be no, but it's a nice idea anyway :)

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:33 pm

can you make a private area in the package library? or are you speaking hypothetically Fang? would be very cool if you could.

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:50 pm

Private areas in the package library are planned for the future (although there might be an extra charge associated with this). But your idea is an interesting one that I'll have to consider. It certainly wouldn't be very good to let people share packages themselves outside of a private group...sort of defeats the purpose of the private group.

Anyway, we'll get into this later next year when I start designing the private package system. Not something to really worry about right now.

And, of course, there is no way to stop someone from just patching their *.pkg file to remove the package ID reference. So it really doesn't have much security right now. All of the security right now is on the server. If you try to upload a specific package ID, it checks your login information with the server login stuff, so that you can't overwrite someone else's package.

Preventing packages from being shared outside of the package library would require a lot more security and encryption, and I'm not really sure if I want to do something like that or not. Certainly not for the public packages.

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:55 pm

the ability to email a package file to a friend that you didnt want up on the library is already proving very handy to me and quite a few of my other mud friends, if security was imped to prevent that it would be a real shame and for me, remove some of the appeal of packages in the first place.

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:55 pm

Weird, my reply to this thread didn't go through. Guess I closed the tab too early.

It was just an idle idea, anyway, I don't realistically expect anything to materialise for that exact reason. But I'm allowed to dream a little dream, aren't I? :P

EDIT: Yes, I only mean this to apply to those private packages. There's no point in having security like that for public packages, but there is for private ones.

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:09 pm

Well, the reason I mentioned it for public packages was that, as crycry mentioned, it's easy to send packages to other people even though the package library was designed to be something that only registered users could use.

I had originally thought about implementing more security so that people *had* to be registered to use packages from the library. But after thinking about it, I decided not to worry about it. Even though there are ways to share packages without being registered and using the package library, I'm hoping that the convienence of using the library will still make it a useful feature for registered users.

And people who refuse to register probably wouldn't register for the library anyway. I'm trying to learn not to waste my time and energy on those kind of annoying people.