Extension Team updates and discussion (July 2021)

Hello, my GDevelop friends! I want to take some time to discuss the Extension Team, including our progress and achievements, as well as areas that need improvement.

First, let’s celebrate the progress we have made. There are now over 70 extensions ready for GDevelop users to start using with just a few clicks. This is amazing! Additionally, we have several new people who have begun submitting extensions, so expect to see a lot more great extensions in the near future.

Now, let’s talk about the idea of community teams. GDevelop is still experimenting with team structures, which means that our teams are quite nebulous and undefined. This method has both pros (we don’t pick a bad structure) and cons (we don’t really have a structure). Strategies on how to manage these teams have been discussed before, including here and here.

My opinion is that we DO need more structure than we have now. For instance, I have volunteered to lead the Extension Team, but I’m still not sure if I have been appointed to the position or not. I’m hoping this forum post will allow us to formulate some good ideas about team structure, document them, and put them into practice.

Regarding the process to submit extensions, I want to propose some minor changes. Trello has been great for me to jot down dozens of ideas (often in the middle of the night!). However, Trello has not proven to be a great tool to share extensions and discuss them in detail. Github issues do a much better job of those tasks. Therefore, I propose:

  • Keep using Trello to document new ideas, identify who is working on what, and track the lifecycle status of each extension (i.e. “new idea”, “submitted”, “accepted”, “abandoned”)

  • Create a Github issue when you are ready for your extension to be reviewed by others. I wish there was a way for extension developers to tag the issue regarding its status: “draft”, “needs reviewed”, “passed review”. Perhaps this can be done manually with large text.

Related to this process, we have identified a lack of reviews being done, which has resulted in a backlog of extensions that need to be evaluated and feedback provided before they can be accepted into GDevelop. Here are my quick thoughts on this:

  • Extension creators should make it easy to review their extension. This includes providing good descriptions and instructions, and an example game that demonstrates how the extension should be used.

  • Extension creators should periodically review extensions submitted by others. This doesn’t have to be a huge ordeal; we primarily need some basic testing and constructive criticism to help improve the extensions.

  • Please be patient and kind. :slight_smile: We are mostly a bunch of volunteers who love creating gamedev tools and sharing them with the world. (Even when there are paid GDevelop developers, they should be similarly treated with respect and empathy).

That’s about all I wanted to say to get this discussion started. Please reply with your thoughts. Thanks!

7 Likes

You are volunteers, so I am following you.

About the reviewing process, it’s important to add a project example for testing.
I’ve added yesterday a line for it in the issue template on Github when we submit a new extension.

I agree with everything.

And the most important part is how to use the extension.
Since a few days the quality of the submissions are better, let’s continue!
The review process is not yet perfected but it is also progressing better than last month.

That said, if several people check out a small piece of an extension and give their feedback, even if there are only a few, that’s a start.
And if it looks error-free, it’s good to let people know!

Personally I don’t check the Trello board for the extensions.
Trello is fine for tracking the states and discuss during the creating phase.
Once the extension is finished it can be submitted to Github.

If I’m looking for how to use the extension and I can’t figure out how to use it, it’s because I don’t understand what it’s for, it’s not usable, it’s not well documented in the extension descriptions.

In that case, if I don’t know. I would now put a message that says follow the submission template. And I would close the extension.
The ones that don’t put effort into submissions, waste everyone’s time checking.

1 Like

+1

I think 4ian had given his approval for that, though it would be nice if he also gave you basic perms on the github (close issues, close PRs, maybe merge PRs) for you to actually be able to do something as the leader of the team.

This could be done with a github projects board, basically it is like trello but each card is an issue. If we make a github team for the “extension team”, we can give the people in that team the perms to modify the projects to show the submission stage and make it easy for reviewers to have a list of everything pending review.

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This could be done with a github projects board, basically it is like trello but each card is an issue. If we make a github team for the “extension team”, we can give the people in that team the perms to modify the projects to show the submission stage and make it easy for reviewers to have a list of everything pending review.

Interesting… perhaps we should give Github Projects a try as a possible replacement for Trello. Can you enable that feature on the GDevelop extensions repo? It would be nice to have one login and website to do both functions.

I cannot sadly, I have no perms on the repo. You will have to ask @4ian.

There are now over 70 extensions ready for GDevelop users to start using with just a few clicks. This is amazing!

That’s frankly awesome!!

For the Trello: happy to move to GitHub projects. I will enable the tab and invite you as contributors.

For instance, I have volunteered to lead the Extension Team, but I’m still not sure if I have been appointed to the position or not.

Sorry it was unclear. Consider that you are appointed, and we will make it clear by inviting the “Extensions Team” as collaborator on GitHub.
This way, you can:

  • triage issues
  • create new issues/move them in the GitHub projects.
  • after a good round of reviews (or if it’s a trivial update/bug fix/typo fixes), you can merge yourself the changes if you are aware of how to do it. In case of doubt, ping me so that I check (especially for extensions where you’re not sure about the technical stuff/quality).

The goal will be to keep a very good quality bar, and make reviews faster :slight_smile:

@tristanrhodes, @arthuro555, @Bouh just let me know in the future when you want me to add/remove someone from the collaborators.
As with everything in the community, if in the future you feel you don’t have the time for this anymore, just tell me and I’ll remove you from the list.

3 Likes

I have set up the github projects and put the curent issues inside of it. I have also enabled automations to

  1. Create a card in “Review needed” when an issue or PR is created
  2. Move to needs changes when a review asks for changes (PR only)
  3. Move to ready for merge once an approving review is added (PR only)
  4. Move closed issues and merged PRs to “Added in GDevelop”
  5. Move unmerged yet closed PRs to “Rejected”
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I have made some additional changes to make reviewing extensions easier:

  • I “assigned” github issues with extensions that had been reviewed to their reviewers to know which extensions need a reviewer, and who to ask if a re-review is needed.
  • I added a JavaScript label to extensions that use JavaScript events so people that are not knowledgeable in JavaScript know which extension they can review.
  • I added an abandoned extension tag for extensions that are looking for a new “maintainer”/“author” to finish and update them, if the original author has vanished.
  • I removed the “Needs a review” tag as one can already see which extensions need a review by looking at the project board.

Did you invite my @tristanbob user? I don’t seem to have additional permissions on the extensions repo.

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Just sent the invite again for the extension repo:

Check your emails to see if you got it :slight_smile:

1 Like