As background, you can click 'edit' on my Carousel-based .love files…
… to edit their source code right on your device, whether it's a computer or mobile device.
The question is how to preserve your edits in the face of changes to lower levels: either the LÖVE app or the .love file you're making changes to.
It seems to me one essential constraint of my platform choice is: upgrading the LÖVE app on a mobile device will blow away all installed .love files. Nothing I can do about this, and luckily LÖVE upgrades rarely enough that maybe we can live with that.
But it does mean we can't get too comfortable making edits on a mobile device. With that in mind, I'm trying out the following flow:
- When you edit a file in my Carousel-based multi-file apps like sokoban.love, it highlights the file in red to show that it has local modifications.
- Later if you switch to a new version of sokoban.love, you can choose to 'revert' the file and blow away your changes.
- You can also 'stash' the file so it won't run but you also still have access to it.
- Stashed files receive an immutable version suffix, and get highlighted in a third color.
- Stashed files can be unstashed if you want to try them out after making edits.
Still klunky, but feels like an improvement. And I'm trying to only show the new complexities when they're relevant, so most people won't have to care about them. Above all, the hope is that the red reminds people to not make too many changes on a mobile device.
And yes, I've been thinking about Ink & Switch all week. Perhaps this needs CRDTs and collaborative editing. But making it more friendly might encourage more changes than this platform can candidly handle, given the restrictions of mobile platforms.
This post is part of my Freewheeling Apps Devlog.
Comments gratefully appreciated. Please send them to me by any method of your choice and I'll include them here.