Proposal

[xlar54]

Was wondering if we could create a new forum under Help, specifically for installation / setup / build.  A lot of guys suggest searching the forum before posting which I agree with, but it sometimes can get mired up in results from other development help requests.

[eXpl0it3r]

Personally I don't see why not. What do others think?

[Laurent]

Why not, but then what will remain in "Help" > "General"?

[eXpl0it3r]

All the offtopic threads.

[Ixrec]

I see quite a few questions on the first page of General that aren't specific to a single module or a build process, so it's not like it'll suddenly be empty...unless we start purging all the newbie questions about code structure and C++ idioms.

[Jesper Juhl]

Was wondering if we could create a new forum under Help, specifically for installation / setup / build.  A lot of guys suggest searching the forum before posting which I agree with, but it sometimes can get mired up in results from other development help requests.

I wonder why we would need a dedicated forum section for this.
Building SFML from source is fairly trivial on all platforms and there are allready detailed guides/tutorials on the website and wiki and (as you mention) existing forum threads. Why do we need more?
If people won't take the time to learn their toolchain and cmake and read the existing build instructions (which should be more than adequate), then adding an extra forum section won't help - those people are still going to be lost.
The task is simple and all developers worth their salt should spend the required time to learn their tools:- and once they do, building, installing and linking SFML is trivial.

[Rosme]

The only reason I would see is for those building SFML on Linux and never done it. I would expect somebody that does so knows how Linux works in general so it wouldn't be a problem, but some don't. And googling the exact name of the dependencies takes 5 minutes top. I've just done it myself, never had done it before. Wasn't hard to find the name of the lib I needed. Within 5 minutes, SFML was installed and I made my things work.

All I see from such a subforum is people not wanting to search and understand. If they never learn how their toolchain and environment works, they'll never get better(not true, but you get the point). I'm with Jesper Juhl on this.

[Laurent]

As easy as you may find the configuration / building process of SFML, people will still continue to post about it... so a new forum would just be a way to better categorize all these posts.

[StormWingDelta]

It'd also make it so we don't go crazy trying to help too.

[Nexus]

I suggest splitting General into a General SFML/Build/Config and a Game Development/Design (related to SFML) subforum. If the forum descriptions are more clear, there will hopefully be less off-topic.

[Laurent]

General SFML/Build/Config and a Game Development/Design (related to SFML) subforum.

What about the few remaining posts that won't fit in those two categories?

[Nexus]

Which ones would there be that don't fit into "General SFML"? If they're only off-topic, I'm fine with them disappearing completely.

[eXpl0it3r]

What about questions, about projects closely related to SFML? For example what should happen to all the Thor questions? Do we only allow them in the project thread itself?

[Rosme]

A SFML Extension Sub-Forum maybe? Anything Thor, SFGUI, SFNUL, etc. could go there?

[eXpl0it3r]

SFGUI, TGUI and a few others have their own forums or similar places.