Deprecate template projects?

[Diego]

Hi Remko,

What do you think about substituting the "template step" in the new project wizard  with an "activate plugins step"?
Should we remove templates from other views as well?
Is a PR welcome?

[Nachogor]

Hi Diego!

After trying the plugins for some time I went back to Template. Stuff like Prefix for pipelines work perfectly with a template and not with a plugin in my case. Most probable I´m messing it when creating the Manifesto.
I also found with the plugins sometimes tactic would stop working, and just stay in the loading page after login in, with the same project as template this never happened again. Just my 2 cents, from someone that knows nothing about coding, but has been using tactic for the last years.

Cheers,
Nacho

[remkonoteboom]

The command used for creating and using templates are ProjectTemplateCreatorCmd and ProjectTemplateInstallerCmd. These commands actually use the plugin architecture.

This is a basically a UI question and how people interact with creation of projects. In the background, it's all plugins, even now. I think designating projects as a template and being able to instantiate a "copy" of that project very useful and doesn't require any mucking about with manifest files. The above commands do a good job of that. And they are very generic so it works for project types that are not VFX based.

However, the current plugin/template used for the initial creation of a VFX project does not use the plugins we have been working. I think this is what should be fixed.

The question is whether we expose the word "plugins" to end users creating the project. One reason I like plugins is because it is something people understand. And the fact that they can create their own templates is a bonus.

[listy]

Before remove something, we need to do basic things:
1. Support it to be backwards compatible
2. Replace it with better and completely comparable solution

So if anything will be deprecated it should be replaced with something completely ready to use.
Plugins is not fully documented at this time, and not in the UI, to me it looks like a lot of hand-making stuff needed to use plugins

[Nachogor]

I agree with Listy! I do understand in the back it´s the same for templates and plugins, but templates are working right away for me and plugins took me lot ot time and finally left it still not working.
IMHO this is the kind of stuff that frustrates VFX people without coding background and make them go away.

[remkonoteboom]

I don't think you quite understood what I wrote. The template command actually creates the plugins for you so you don't have to create the manifest yourself.

I didn't say to get rid of templates. I said that templates already are an automatic generator of a plugin. If you look at the template that you created and used to instantiate new projects, you will see that it is just a plugin.

Also, the VFX template that is currently used on project creation for base TACTIC (not your templates) is old and should be be updated to use the new template (also a plugin) that Diego and I have been updating.

This will not affect your templates that you have already created.

[listy]

Then how replacing templates with plugins make things different?

Creating the project will looks like: Create empty project > Apply plugin
VS
Create project+plugin.

[remkonoteboom]

That's what I have been trying to say. You can't replace templates with plugins because templates are plugins.
Which is why I wrote: "This is a basically a UI question and how people interact with creation of projects."

I think Diego knows this (he can chime in as to what he meant). I personally think the term "template" is fine, but I would like the current VFX template to use the new plugins rather what it is using now.

To be clear: the current vfx template that is used is in a .zip file in "<install_dir>/src/install/start/template/vfx-1.0.0.zip". If you unzip this file, you will see it is just a plugin.
The "plugins" that Diego and I have been updating are located in "<install_dir>/src/plugins/TACTIC/vfx" and this is what the project template should be using when selecting VFX.

None of what I am saying has anything to do with creating your own templates. These use the above commands that I mentioned which generate a plugin specific to your project template. When selecting a new project with this template, all TACTIC does is create a new project and instantiate your template plugins.

[Diego]

Yes mine, was mostly a UI question.
The point is making the new project wizard functional wwn selecting a "template/plugin", we can retail the "template" name.
I guess the main problem is that a template is one plugin where VFX is composed of two plugins

[remkonoteboom]

I also noticed that the new VFX template was 2 plugins would be an issue, so yesterday, I added a new tag to the plugin manifest (not commited yet):

Code:

<manifest>
  <data>
    <code>TACTIC/vfx</code>
    <title>Scrum</title>
    <description>TACTIC VFX</description>
    <version>1</version>
  </data>
  <!-- Plugins -->
  <plugin code="stypes"/>
  <plugin code="config"/>
</manifest>

This allows you to reference another plugin (relative path here).  The plugin loader with then load (or unload the plugin) that is reference.  This allows you create a superset plugin that references other plugins.  So, in this case, you would only have to load the "vfx" plugin which would then load the "stypes" and then the "config" plugin.

There are details that need to be worked out, but I think it's a good start.