EDev FAQ

Okey-dokey, here are some FAQs for those in the edev usergroup. You, Guest User, are not a member of the edev group here, on E2. In this FAQ, "I" is N-Wing.

Questions:

  1. What are some of my superpowers?
  2. Why are random people sending me private messages that start with "EDEV:" or "ONO: EDEV:"?
  3. What is the background of edev and it's relationship to the development of the site/source?
  4. What is with the "bug" nodetype?
  5. What is this "Edevify!" link thingy I see in my Epicenter nodelet?
  6. Does everybody have their own Everything site for hacking on?
  7. What is an edevite?
  8. What is an Edevdoc?
  9. Why did others (or, why should I) join the edev group?
  10. (TODO) How do we go about finding tasks here? If we have personal projects for the improvement of E2, what is the appropriate way to get started? Should I verify that what I'm thinking of is useful, or should I make it work and then submit source patches?

Q: What are some of my superpowers?
A: I wouldn't say superpowers, just powers. Anyway:

  • You're a hash! (in the Other Users nodelet, edevites have a % next to their name (which is only viewable by fellow edevites))
  • You can see the source code for many things here. If you visit something like a superdoc (for example, this node), if you append &displaytype=viewcode to the URL, it will show the code that generates that node. When you have the Everything Developer nodelet turned on, you can more easily simply follow the little "viewcode" link (which only displays on nodes you may view the source for). For example, you can see this node's source by going here.
  • You can see other random things, like dbtables (nodes and other things (like softlinks) are stored in tables in the database; viewing one shows the field names and storage types) and theme (a theme contains information about a generic theme).
  • You can see/use List Nodes of Type, which lists nodes of a certain type. One example (ab)use of this is to get a list of rooms. nate in Edev First Post! (doesn't that sound like a troll title?) lists some other node types you may be interested in. Actually, you should probably read that anyway, it has other starting information, too.
  • You have your own (well, shared with editors and admins) section in user settings 2. (As of the time this FAQ was written, there is only 1 setting there, which is explained in the next question.)
  • You can Edevify things. See the later question for more information about this.

Q: Why/how are random people sending me private messages that have '(edev)' in front of them?
A (short) : They aren't random people, and they aren't sending to just you.
A (longer) : When somebody is a member of a usergroup, they can send a private message to that group, which will then be sent to everybody in that group. In this case, those "random people" are other people in the edev usergroup, and they're typing something like this in the chatterbox:

/msg edev Hi everybody, I'm Doctor Nick! Have you seen EDev FAQ yet?

and (assuming the other person is you), everybody in edev would then get a message that looks something like:

(edev) Guest User says Hi everybody, I'm Doctor Nick! Have you seen EDev FAQ yet?

. If the /msg is changed to a /msg? instead (with the question mark), then that message is only sent to people that are currently online (which will make the message start with 'ONO: '). For the most part, there isn't much reason to send this type of message in the edev group. For a little more information about this feature, see online only /msg.

Q: What is the background of edev and it's relationship to the development of the site/source?
A: The edev usergroup is pretty new, and it arose out of nothing. It seems that nate (the creator of the original Everything engine (once found on http://everything.slashdot.org/) and the main maintainer of the modern ("version 2") Everything engine (found on http://www.EveryDevel.com/), which this site is based on) wanted people to have the chance to poke around and learn how this beast works. They might even be able to fix some things...). Some code snippets people have written as part of edev have been incorporated into the E2 code here. Will yours be next? Note: edev users are not able to add/change the code directly, only an admin can do that.

Q: What is with the "bug" nodetype?
A: The nodetype bug was the start of a bug-tracking system. However, it was never finished, so the ones that exist were created accidently, and mean nothing.

Q: What is this "Edevify!" link thingy I see in my Epicenter nodelet?
A: This simply puts whatever node you're viewing on the edev (usergroup) page. About the only time to use this is when you create a normal writeup that is relevant to edev. Note: this does not work on things like "group" nodes, which includes e2nodes; to "Edevify" your writeup, you must be viewing your writeup alone (the easiest way is to follow the idea/thing link when viewing your writeup from the e2node).

Q: Does everybody have their own Everything site for hacking on?
A from anotherone: I really doubt that more than a few users have their own everythings. Installation isn't easy, even assuming you've got a spare server lying around.
A continues with N-Wing: Real fun comes from the fact that EveryDevel's current version is 1.0, and Everything 2 (this site) has an older core. This means that several (important) things vary. Overall, the new ecore is a bit more flexible and easier to use. For example, instead of having to call a htmlcode by doing htmlcode('htmlcode_name','param0,param1,etc'), the function can be called directly, like a normal Perl function.

Q: What is an edevite?
A: Instead of calling somebody "a member of the edev group" or "in the edev (user)group", I just call them an "edevite".

Q: What is an Edevdoc?
A: The Edevdoc extends the document nodetype, but allows edevites (and only edevites) to create and view it. Eventually, they will also any edevite to edit any other Edevdoc.

Q: Why did others (or, why should I) join the edev group?
A from anotherone: I'm in the group because I like to take stuff apart, see how it works. Understand what's going on. I've had a few of my ideas implemented, and it was cool knowing that I'd dome something useful.
A from conform: I'm interested (for the moment) on working on the theme implementation and I've got some ideas for nodelet UI improvements.
A from N-Wing: I originally (way back in the old days of Everything 1) had fun trying to break/hack E1 (and later E2) (hence my previous E2 goal, "Breaking Everything"). Around the time I decided to start learning some Perl, the edev group was announced, so I was able to learn Perl from working code and find more problems in E2 at the same time. (However, it wasn't until later I realized that E2 isn't the best place to start learning Perl from. :) )

Q: How do we go about finding tasks here? If we have personal projects for the improvement of E2, what is the appropriate way to get started? Should I verify that what I'm thinking of is useful, or should I make it work and then submit source patches?
A: (TODO (eventually...))

I'm in the middle of writing this! When the initial questions are all finished (probably never at this rate :-/ ), I'll /msg the edev group.

Thanks to conform for many questions (edev: EDEV FAQ foundations), and anotherone for some answers.

-- N-Wing