Telemetry: make addon names linkable to their respective github repos

[luzpaz]

Making the names of the addon links is an educational opportunity for users who are interested in learning more about said addon.

[luzpaz]

@Reqrefusion thoughts ?

[chennes]

This would require a mapping of all addon names to their respective URLs, and would require that list be kept up-to-date. I'm not sure that's a great use of anyone's time unless someone is really excited about doing it. @hasecilu ?

[Reqrefusion]

Actually, I tried to do something about it, but I put it on the back burner because I was dealing with other things. Simply display the addon manager's information on the site in some way. Perhaps this can be added.
https://cizgivedizi.com/FreeCAD-Homepage/addons.php
I'm trying to convert it to json a little bit here. Some things still need to be fixed.

[hyarion]

Wouldn't it be better if the telemetry addon sent the information with the data record. Then we can parse that information and create a translating map in fetch-posthog.php to be used by telemetry.php

[chennes]

How will the telemetry addon get that information? I'm not sure I want to add that much unrelated code to it...

[Reqrefusion]

I think it would be nice to create a general gallery of addons, not just about telemetry.

When I expressed this idea on discord and said that I wanted to do it with the existing tools, it was not liked very much, but I can still look at it a little.

Wouldn't it be better if the telemetry addon sent the information with the data record. Then we can parse that information and create a translating map in fetch-posthog.php to be used by telemetry.php

To be honest, I didn't quite get it. But it would be better not to mix it too much.

[hyarion]

To be honest, I didn't quite get it. But it would be better not to mix it too much.

I just meant that the telemetry could report the addons url/repository as well, as additional data.
This way we would have both the name and a url which would be enough for to create the requested feature, without any manual work.

We do a similar thing to generate the combined Python version number out of the major, minor and patch numbers.

[chennes]

The problem is that the telemetry Addon only knows the names of the directories in Mod: it doesn't have other info about the Addons, and that information is not easily obtainable.

[hyarion]

The problem is that the telemetry Addon only knows the names of the directories in Mod: it doesn't have other info about the Addons, and that information is not easily obtainable.

All information is available in package.xml in the Mod directory. This data could also be cached if needed.
And if you don't want to load data from disk for the Telemetry, then FreeCAD could cache this information when loaded.

I'm not trying to argue that we need this feature, just that it is possible if we would like to have it :)

[Reqrefusion]

Technically, since I have made an addon page, I can use telemetry data there or vice versa. So what is desired or better here is possible to do with the foundation that I have laid now, which I have already mentioned.