Current state and usability

[Stephen Booth]

I just cloned the Shine git repository this morning to see if some of
the issues I'd experienced previously are resolved. I love the idea
of Shine, but I feel that in its current state is is unusable.

I just spent quite a while trying to figure out why my S3 uploads
weren't working. It turns out that the S3 upload code was commented
out in this commit (back in June!):
https://github.com/tylerhall/Shine/commit/1dcdb4b767134c8daec6da18ca1cd62c6fb6ed3b

I uncommented the two pertinent lines in version-new.php and was able
to successfully upload to S3. However, like some other users have
mentioned the appcast links for the downloads are broken. I was able
to fix the issue with a small amount of effort:

diff --git a/version-new.php b/version-new.php
index c590fa1..24c00d1 100644
--- a/version-new.php
+++ b/version-new.php
@@ -25,12 +25,12 @@
$v->signature = sign_file($_FILES['file']
['tmp_name'], $app->sparkle_pkey);

$object = strtolower(preg_replace('/[^a-zA-
Z0-9]/', '', $app->name)) . "_" . $v->version_number
- $v->url = slash($app->s3path) . $object;
+ $v->url = "https://s3.amazonaws.com/" .
slash($app->s3bucket) . slash($app->s3path) . $object;
$info = parse_url($app->s3path);
$object = slash($info['path']) . $object;
chmod($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], 0755);
- // $s3 = new S3($app->s3key, $app->s3pkey);
- // $s3->uploadFile($app->s3bucket, $object,
$_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], true);
+ $s3 = new S3($app->s3key, $app->s3pkey);
+ $s3->uploadFile($app->s3bucket, $object,
$_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], true);
$v->insert();

redirect('versions.php?id=' . $app->id);

My real concern is whether anyone except Tyler is using Shine, and how
viable an option it is for its intended purpose. Obviously Shine
works for specific setups- the reason the appcast download links
weren't working is that Tyler uses CNAME records to alias
s3.amazonaws.com- but the repository has been borked since June and I
didn't see any comments here or on github even mentioning the fact. I
definitely appreciate the fact that it is open source, and I'm willing
to help, but does the project have a future?

Stephen

[John C. Fox]

Hi Stephen:

I've been using Shine for some time now: I very much appreciate what it does, and have been able to get help from Tyler in using it.

That said, its long term future is not clear to me in a post Mac App Store world. MemoryMiner is not on the App Store yet, but that's just because I wasn't able to get everything in order in time. I hope to be on there in the next week or so. I'll maintain my own app store for a while and see how things go.

Independent of license generation and Sparkle support, I also use Shine in conjunction with the OpenFeedbackFramework (which lets users send comments/bug reports, etc.). That alone is valuable to me, especially since it provides some minimal, opt-in way to connect with MAS users, contact with whom is otherwise not a given.

I'm perfectly happy to contribute $$ to help pay for fixes and improvements. What I don't have time for (or that much interest, to be perfectly honest) is to go spelunking through PHP code. Nothing against the code, or PHP for that matter, it's just a matter of time and priorities.

Hope this helps.

Best,

John

[Jeff Schilling]

Stephen,

I use Shine in the real world - Tyler and others have been responsive when initially getting it setup.

I also found it easy to tweak (for CocoaFob licensing) and other minor improvements.  

That said, I haven't touched my install in a long while and it just works.

I too got hung up on the CNAME detail, but I'm pretty sure that got captured in the user group.

-jeff

Jeff Schilling
manicwave Productions
http://manicwave.com

[Tyler Hall]

Thanks to John and Jeff for chiming in on this thread. They've been
two of Shine's biggest proponents over the last year or so. And,
apologies to Stephen for such a painful setup process.

So, the future of Shine? All cards on the table...

Last June I formed an LLC with the intention of building out Shine 2.0
as a hosted service that developers could sign-up for and have
everything "just work". Work progressed quickly enough to the point
where we were about 85% complete.

And then Steve announced the Mac App Store.

I knew the App Store would come to Mac eventually - I just wasn't
expecting an announcement so soon. And I certainly wasn't expecting
"Oh, and we're opening it in 90 days". That really took me back.

So things are still in limbo at the moment. I have no doubt the Mac
App Store will be a hit with consumers, but I am waiting to see how it
plays out among established indie developers before either a)
completing work on Shine and launching the service or b) opening up
the code and letting the community do what they want with it.

That's the current state of the project and the reason there hasn't
been any real work done on the existing version. That said, any
improvements you (or anyone else) make are very welcome additions. You
can either submit a GitHub pull request or just email me your changes
directly and I'll do my best to get the integrated into the main
project.

And don't ever be afraid to ask for help - either to the list or to me
personally. I'm the asshole who release all this code without any
documentation. The least I can do is support it :-)

Tyler

[Stephen Booth]

Thanks John, Jeff and Tyler for the replies! It's nice to hear from
others who have successfully used Shine.

Although it was a frustrating start I seem to have Shine working now.
All told it took me perhaps 4 hours of work, most of which was spent
debugging php which I don't do very often. That is obviously much
less time that I would spend rolling my own solution- thanks for
providing the code.

As Tyler said the elephant in the room is the MAS. I am also very
curious how it will play out among Indie devs. I'm having a tough time
deciding whether to sell products through my own website or just suck
up the 30% loss and do it through Apple.

Stephen

PS The tickets tab doesn't do anything, because the tickets.php file
is missing from the repository.

[Tyler Hall]

Doh. I was originally going to include a bug report/ticketing system
in Shine, but pushed it off to 2.0. Can't believe I left the tab in
there.

Tyler

[Jeff Schilling]

> As Tyler said the elephant in the room is the MAS. I am also very
> curious how it will play out among Indie devs. I'm having a tough time
> deciding whether to sell products through my own website or just suck
> up the 30% loss and do it through Apple.

Glad to hear that you're up and running.

One thing to consider is that the cut is not really 30% vs 0% given that your processing fees will be anywhere from 5-10% (FastSpring, PayPal) + your time.

-jeff

[Kevin LaCoste]

Thanks for posting these changes Stephen.

I'm one of the unlucky ones who got lost in the PHP and the explanations received on list weren't enough to make it click for me. I eventually gave up on getting Shine working. I may have another peek now.

Kevin