Project hosting = effective communication

The internet sure has many uses. But Google groups is not a utility many people know about. I started a project this week to better organize my work with Bato 1.1. If you've been following my blog so far (and you should), you'd know that Robocode is open source software that was created to help programmers get better at coding in java. I've also used different software for packaging my code so that it can be better distributed and for others to modify and improve it if they so wish. Ant the packaging was able to package and debug my code in a very short time. This week the focus was on software updates and project hosting.

Subversion is a system that allows users to update their project without too much hassle. This program updates as you change the code. If you change just one line, it's no big deal. Just commit that one file and Subversion can update it. There's no need to upload the entire file again. It was easy, but it takes time to get used to. I used a client called TortoiseSVN. It does not have a GUI. Instead you create a repository in which you upload or download files. This allows anything within the repository to be uploaded and changed in a short time.

At the other end of the upload is the project site, which I created on Google groups. It's a site that I haven't known about until this course in ICS 413. It's a very valuable development. Because it's free! Through Google groups I was able to create a site in which to explain the development for Bato. The initial setup was really easy. I added members and a discussion group to talk about the topic at hand. It was also easy to create pages for visitors to look at and learn about my project.

A problem I encountered was with the email. I was not able to enable an email send-out to the discussion group in the event that I was to change my package and let members know about the change. These are the links to my project and discussion.
(http://code.google.com/p/robocode-wcm-bato/)
(http://groups.google.com/group/robocode-wcm-bato-discuss)

SVN and Google groups allows users to effectively and cheaply host a project. They are tools that can be very beneficial in maintaining communication between different developers and the public. One thing I know about open source software is this, you have to effectively document you code, as well as provide a package for users to easily download. These two mediums allow for that and makes life so much simpler.