From BlenderWiki
Currently we try to encourage developer to become involved by having them develop their scripts in contrib, but its a hassle to test for user and developers alike.
While we have these docs available:
- users need to setup another svn, remember to update it.
- even if someone sets these up for themselves - testing builds wont include them.
- result - contrib scripts are not well tested, devs work on their tools with little feedback. its fine as a sandpit for new devs but does not help them get involved with users and get feedback.
- proposed solution
add another extern
so we have this in: https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/blender
release/scripts/addons/ release/scripts/addons_contrib/
(addons contrib would be an extern referencing) https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-extensions/contrib/py/scripts/addons
disable for releases
scons / cmake buildsystems are aware of a 'release' build, we can use this setting so release builds wont copy 'addons_contrib', this means there is still incentive for developers to have their work reviewed to be moved into addons/ and ensures we don't have lower quality scripts in release.
If users complain some addon is available in testing builds but not in the release, this is a good indication the script should be reviewed for moving to addons/
testing as a support level
currently we have 2 support levels in the addons interface "Official" and "Community", a third level can be added called "Testing", this also gets its own icon. it should be very clear that users are enabling testing addons.
