Mark Fork as Main

[Noggog]

Have the ability to mark a fork as the main repo to list. Useful for when a fork has overtaken the main in the community, and should be the primary listing

[Delfofthebla]

+1

[Noggog]

@Delfofthebla do you have an example of a patcher in the wild where this might be used?

[Delfofthebla]

Ah.. Unfortunately I made this post after I had deleted mine. I had two forks that I thought might be useful to other people. They weren't really meant as "replacements" for the original repo but as something that offered similar functionality that built upon the original patcher. After I learned that it was not possible for them to be scraped, I deleted them and rehosted as their own repos, which is...fine, but seems like it shouldn't be necessary.

I glanced through the recently updated repos in the dependency graph, and most forks are pretty small or outdated. The spell research synthesizer that is the current default is technically a fork ( https://github.com/audriuska12/SpellResearchSynthesizer )

I dunno if that was done manually or what, but that's the only example I could find that was recent.

[Noggog]

Gotcha. It doesn't scrape forks by default because it would lead to this:

• Dev makes cool popular patcher
• 100 other devs want to contribute, and so fork
• 100 other devs make PRs to the original patcher to help improve the original
• Scraper sees 100 duplicate patchers and floods the system

Marking a fork as the "main" one would usually be reserved for if the original author fell off the face of the earth, and wasn't merging anything in. Another fork might take up the mantle and continue on. But also, they might just rehost to their own patcher in that case. Might be easier that way.

something that offered similar functionality that built upon the original patcher... After I learned that it was not possible for them to be scraped, I deleted them and rehosted as their own repos

Yeah, all depends on the gritty specifics. If you're adding new features to the patcher, then it might be more appropriate to fold the improvements back into the original via a Pull Request.

However, if the scope/goal is completely separate, and you're just looking to the original as a loose template, then making your own patcher makes more sense.

It's a bit of a subjective call. But I think the important highlight for this specific issue is that upgrading a Fork to be the main one would be a rare occurrence