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From: | sergey plotnikov |
Subject: | Re: Distributing unstable Windows binaries |
Date: | Mon, 14 Jul 2014 17:38:07 +0200 |
User-agent: | Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.6.0 |
On 14/07/14 16:49, Carnë Draug wrote:
On 13 July 2014 14:10, Philip Nienhuis <address@hidden> wrote:Hi, Markus Bergholz and I were discussing putting up unstable Windows binaries (3.9.0+ & 4.1.0+) on mxeoctave.osuv.de. Before proceeding I'd like to have the opinions of other Octave developers on this. My thoughts: - Using mxe-octave I regularly build binary Windows installers anyway from the gui-release and default branches (currently 3.9.0+ & 4.1.0+ combined into one installer). Usually soon after a merge from stable -> gui-release -> default. I use those binaries at work (always a good test), rather than stable Octave versions. - The unstable versions offer features (and fixes) not yet in stable that (some/many) users might need. Until now Linux users had a bit of an advantage here: even with mxe-octave the treshold for building unstable (Windows, or OSX) Octave versions is still significantly higher than for Linux users. - I could also distribute "unstable" OF package versions (in my case the io package) this way. - Some increase in bug reports / issues / support requests etc can be expected. Is this a bad thing? - User expectation needs attention. I was thinking of an Octave prompt along the lines of: "Octave <version> development snapshot <date> - use at own risk!\n>>" ...plus maybe some additions to the readme. Currently my mxe-octave build tree is somewhat outdated and a bit messy as I have many personal mods; so I think my current unstable Windows binaries are less suited for distribution. But now that mxe-octave is more or less feature-complete (i.e., Ghostscript has been added) I have a good reason to upgrade :-) and it's easier for me to supply the mxe changes to comply with the GPL. Thought, opinions?I don't think this is a very good idea and might actually be dangerous for Octave image. No matter how many warnings you give to the users, they will just ignore them, and rush to the very last release. Then they will complain it's crap when it crashes. That's the whole point of having versions, we know it's not good enough to release and for general use. So it's not released. There's not even distribution of this for Linux, which would be easier to set up. Even the Octave group in launchpad [1], which used to have a PPA for the testing "releases", seems to now be down to the stable versions only [2]. Carnë [1] https://launchpad.net/~octave [2] https://launchpad.net/~octave/+archive/ubuntu/stable But in this case we may simply limit access to those binaries. So that only those who need it for particular purpose (developers) may download them. I don't want to say Octave-image-danger is not a problem, but if a binary is not distributed officially it's not really an image of Octave, but just a state of development version. Almost anyone may compile default branch on Linux. And if I see it right this doesn't harm Octave image, but just helps to spot potential problems. As far as i understand Philip, he just wanted to provide something similar to compilation of a default branch, but for Windows. When compiling on our own, some of us may merely overlook a critical changeset needed to (cross)compile decently working version of default branch. But if the compilation is done regularly by experienced person which knows most of pitfalls this problem is not so critical. I'm not proposing everyday snapshots, but at least more or less regular "correct" builds suitable for Octave testing. Sergey |
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