Re: Downloading a build from buildbot

[PhilipNienhuis]

Christian Frick wrote
> Dear all
> 
> I'd like to test the newest (not yet stable) changes of Octave for Windows
> and therefore try to download the newest builds from
> http://buildbot.octave.org:8010<http://buildbot.octave.org:8010/>.
> Unfortunately, I was not able to find any download link in e.g.
> http://buildbot.octave.org:8010/#/builders/14/builds/489. Is this even
> supported? If yes, what do I have to do? Do I have to be logged in?
> 
> Sorry for this very basic question, thanks a lot and best regards

It's no unfair question.

Some of us (including me) regularly make development crossbuilds, but don't
upload them.

Below is what *I think* is the reasoning, and it is along the lines I think
about it:

We are wary that such unstable builds might be disseminated to a wider
audience that doesn't want to just test them but rather thinks they can be
used for daily work. Some of us might even fear that this applies especially
to Windows users.
As such unstable builds may have yet uncovered bugs reaching from harmless
to severe we're afraid that using those builds for daily work and then
hitting such bugs will lead to an in our opinion unduly bad exposure for
Octave.
Another thing of course is that keeping those unstable builds will lead to a
huge dead archive of unstable builds only taking up storage space. FYI,
Windows installers including pre-built packages are >310 MB these days.

So your alternative is waiting for release candidates.

All in all I think this is not unreasonable. Many (but OK, not all) software
vendors and communities essentially work the very same way, Octave is by no
means alone in this.

So yes there's a hurdle, i.e., you must be able to produce your own unstable
builds in order to be able to test them.
FYI, I do this myself (AND I use those for daily work 8-Z ) but then I
usually have several recent unstable builds installed side by side to be
able to have a fallback option and I always report bugs and very rough
edges.

HTH
Philip




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