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Journal #1
Description
Allzpark (a.k.a. LaunchApp2) started as a 4-month commission for the Japanese Studio Anima. Time was divided into roughly these parts.
- Week 0-0 Tour of physical building, infrastructure and crew
- Week 1-2 Requirements gathering, an evaluation if current system
- Week 3-4 Evaluation of off-the-shelf options, e.g. Rez
- Week 5-6 Evaluation of studio, system and personnel resources
- Week 7-8 Integration and testing of fundamental infrastucture software, Ansible
- Week 9-10 Research and development of Rez to fit the criteria and initial prototype
- Week 11-12 Conversion of existing package repository
- Week 13-14 Implementation of graphical user interface, LaunchApp2
- Week 15-16 Refinement of features, including localisation
- Week 17-18 Final integration and training of staff
Journal
Allzpark was initially an internal project, never intended to be open sourced. As a result, the first 2 months of development are locked away behind an internal journal for the company (due to disclosure of sensitive information).
Luckily, it was around this time that Allzpark got approved for open source and when I was able to start sharing its development publicly, so that you are able to take part in the design decisions made, the why and how. This way, you're able to accurately determine whether a solution to a new problem takes the original requirements into consideration; something all too often lost in software projects.
Find below the daily journal from this development since then.
- 4th June 2019 - Hello GitHub
- 5th June 2019 - Ticking boxes
- 6th June 2019 - Ticking boxes pt. 2
- 7th June 2019 - Software Packaging Detour
- 10th June 2019 - Software Packaging Detour pt. 2
- 11th June 2019 - Ticking Boxes pt. 3
- 12th June 2019 - Ticking Boxes pt. 4
- 13th June 2019 - Filtering and Commands
- 17th June 2019 - Project Packages
- 18th June 2019 - Performance
- 21st June 2019 - Linux
- 24th June 2019 - Localisation pt. 1
- 25th June 2019 - Localisation pt. 2
- 26th June 2019 - Localisation pt. 3
- 27nd June 2019 - Tutorials
- 28th June 2018 - Localisation pt. 4
- 1st July 2019 - Website
- 2nd July 2019 - Website pt. 2
- 3rd July 2019 - Website pt. 3
- 5th July 2019 - Website pt. 4
- 8th July 2019 - Stability
- 9th July 2019 - Project Selector
Activity
mottosso commentedon Jul 10, 2019
This time having a look at project cosmetics, and project package metadata.
mottosso commentedon Jul 12, 2019
Artists and developers can now localise packages visually, alongside the command-line.
mottosso commentedon Jul 12, 2019
Had a look at excluding localised and development packages, along with maintaining and restoring default values of parameters, both for package options and settings overall.
mottosso commentedon Jul 16, 2019
Had a look at
rez env --patchtoday, to enable arbitrary package additions, or changes to resolved versions, via the GUI. This could also be used to select asset and shot combinations, albeit a bit rudimentary. The entry is currently stored alongside the GUI on open/close, across applications and projects.mottosso commentedon Jul 16, 2019
Today I had a look at theming and user-editable environment variables.
mottosso commentedon Jul 17, 2019
Today was general bug-fixing and testing in production, filling in missing bits of documentation and generally increasing the robustness of the system.
mottosso commentedon Jul 18, 2019
Finding more edge cases and implementing a few new features, in particular the ability to have a range of versions for a given application, and an accurate preview of the final command used in the shell to reproduce the environment coming out of Allzpark.
mottosso commentedon Jul 19, 2019
Today was about visualising "latest" and "beta" status of packages, having a look at graphing a resolve, along with a number of bug fixes.
mottosso commentedon Jul 22, 2019
Having a look at more intuitive patching, by double-clicking on the version in the Packages tab. Now it translates that action into what you would otherwise have to type manually into the Patch field.
mottosso commentedon Jul 23, 2019
Had a look at error handling and visualisation, using GraphViz.
mottosso commentedon Jul 29, 2019
mottosso commentedon Jul 30, 2019
General maintenance today, sifting through and making sure everything works, also adding a right-click menu to the profile.
mottosso commentedon Jul 31, 2019
Had a request to facilitate use of
pythonwon Windows, in order to allow for the Allzpark window to appear without an associated console window, which I then went ahead and implemented!mottosso commentedon Jul 31, 2019
Finishing up at Anima, to be continued in the open source realm!
mottosso commentedon Aug 1, 2019
1st August 2019
Rounded off some documentation and fixed a critical bug related to changing profiles in Allzpark. Expecting to make an announcement of a version 1 beta on Tech-Artists, Python-Inside-Maya and 3DPRO early next week.
mottosso commentedon Aug 5, 2019
5th August 2019
Working with the Avalon community to get Allzpark into the mix.