Mod Organization for Team

[AndalayBay]

I've recently joined a team working on a large mod and I've been put in charge of the main plugin. I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle the changes from the other members. I can't turn the main plugin into a master because it has edits to the Tamriel worldspace and existing cells.

If I simply flip the bit on the main plugin to temporarily make it a master, and have my team create patches (with the main plugin as master), will I be able to merge those patches back into the main plugin? They will be adding new content and modifying existing content. For example, they will be adding clutter to custom houses that are in the main plugin already.

[Arthmoor]

Yes, if you turn it into an ESM and they make changes based on that you can just use Gecko to do a Merge to Master on the resulting patch files.

It might be slightly easier to have everyone use CSE instead though so you don't have to mess about with flag flipping and so they can do local testing of their changes without having to do the opposite.

[AndalayBay]

I understood that I wouldn't be able to turn it into an ESM because it makes changes to the existing stuff - it's not all new content.

So with CSE, I know that the team would be able to create patches without have to mess about with flag flipping. So when I want to merge their work back in, I would convert the main plugin to an ESM (temporarily) and then use Gecko to merge to master?

Edit: Tried this and it didn't quite work. I managed to get it working by flipping the flag on the "master" plugin to ESMify it with Wrye Bash. Then I used Gecko to Merge to Master. That seemed to work. If I converted the "master" plugin to be an ESM file, that didn't work because the patch was dependent on something with an ESP extension, not an ESM extension.

Thanks, Arthmoor, I think I got it sorted... Now we'll see what happens.

Edited January 31, 2011 by AndalayBay

[Arthmoor]

Yes, you can do things the way you did too. Gecko will accept an ESP as the master to merge to though if you set the file dialogue to "all files" instead of just "master files". You do need to flip the bit back on your parent ESP though because Gecko will set that whenever doing a merge to master.

[AndalayBay]

Yes, you can do things the way you did too. Gecko will accept an ESP as the master to merge to though if you set the file dialogue to "all files" instead of just "master files". You do need to flip the bit back on your parent ESP though because Gecko will set that whenever doing a merge to master.

Yup, I got that too. At least it's just me that has to worry about the flag flipping. Now we're going to have an entire team (about 7 people) using CSE! I hope ShadeMe's ready...