Modification documentation

[Mike-N-Tosh]

Greetings,

This is an open question to all the modders out there.

What do you do to help you keep track of your modifications?

I am asking this in hindsight, as I heavily modified my 68c V3.1.x to meet my needs. My biggest issue was that I didn't keep track of how/what I did with my modifications. Although I have a pretty good memory, it's impossible to remember it all. (I did somewhere down the line start inserting my own comments in the code)

I am about to start the process of modifying V4 on my local test computer. I don't want to replicate my previous haphazard methodology. I also thought that if I had a good system in place for doing modifications, that it could be useful to others. Similar to what Lhotch did for V.3 in his pdf, however more code modification specific. (More like a developers manual as opposed to just the layout/UI).

Any thoughts, ideas? Please post what you do to keep track of your mods.

Thanks in advance for your consideration and participation.

-Mike

[suzkaw]

I guess it depends on how heavily you are going to modify it.

On some things I just keep a text file with files I changed and a brief description. Then later I can go back and compare them.

Another option is to use a local subversion or cvs repository. This way you always have a revision log of all the changes made. Here is a link to some more information on this: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2006/...acks-with-cvs/

[Mike-N-Tosh]

Originally Posted by suzkaw

Another option is to use a local subversion or cvs repository. This way you always have a revision log of all the changes made. Here is a link to some more information on this: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2006/...acks-with-cvs/

Thanks Eric.

I checked that out.

Many hours later...
I ran across an article about a company that was at MacWorld showing this off: Flow This looks really awesome.

-Mike

[suzkaw]

That looks pretty neat thanks for posting the link. I signed up for the beta so hopefully I will get accepted and give it a try.

[Mike-N-Tosh]

I signed up too. I guess we'll see what unfolds, but the potential looks phenomenal.

Back to the discussion at hand:
My thoughts about this is to ultimately have a developers handbook essentially. It might even be plausible to make it a wiki where users could enter in their methods and means.

Not to take anything away from the users manual, but as a developer/modifier of the product the users manual leaves me longing for much more information. In reading posts in the forums, it seems that many people are always asking many of the same things.

An example of the type of information that I would find useful as a developer is just how all the parts actually integrate together. You know, like the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone type of stuff. Even just a visual mapping of the files in V3.1.x would have been extremely helpful to me.

Any other thoughts from anyone?

Thanks,
Mike