Call for volunteers - improved installation experience on OS X, Windows, Linux/Unix

Alexander Belchenko bialix at ukr.net
Thu Dec 6 18:04:01 GMT 2007


Ian Clatworthy пишет:
> What pieces need to be bundled?
> -------------------------------
> 
> Here are the pieces I think we ought to be thinking about in terms of a
> "batteries included" VCS package:

I'm still against idea of building one monstrous mega package for 
windows with all batteries inside, because of the size.

> * core product
> * core productivity plugins
> * easy migration from Subversion
> * web server to browse branches
> * GUI tool
> * OS-specific shell integration.
> 
> How should we bundle those?
> ---------------------------
> 
> I'm not suggesting we want a single installer for all of that on each OS
> (for 1.0 at least). However, I would like to see us explicit make an
> effort to select and package the above pieces into installers for
> Windows and OS X. The important ingredient to me is dependency
> management rather than installer count. For example, it's ok to have
> several installers but the one including bzr-gtk needs to bundle the
> right py-gtk library for example, the one bundling bzr-svn needs to
> bundle the right pieces for it, etc.

For standalone bzr.exe it's only one right way. But here is 
cross-dependencies. E.g. bzr-svn want to have rebase plugin for some 
features. Should I put rebase together with bzr-svn?

> The new user plug-in selection debate
> -------------------------------------
> 
> Beyond my above call for more/better installers/packaging, I'd like to
> have a debate about which plug-ins we ought to be packaging/recommending
> (out of the many, many plugins) to brand new, shiny users.

There is really worst thing: how many plugins actively maintained? How 
many of them is out-of-date re packs? How many of them popular, and 
proved their usefulness over the time, and how many of them just 
experimental?

> 
> Help!!!! Which migration tool from Subversion should new users start
> with? We currently give them two branches of svn2bzr to choose from as
> well as bzr-svn. That's *too many options* to begin with! Right now,
> which is the best, most reliable option? Users want to switch from
> Subversion to Bazaar. Let's make it as easy to do that as we can so
> users can try out Bazaar on their branches. (Having tried it and fallen
> in love, we might recommend one of the other choices which has different
> risks/rewards. That's ok IMHO.)

People constantly ask me about package for bzr-svn. Is not this is the 
answer?

> *Which* GUI tool is recommended for new users on different platforms?
> They can always install another one later but which one should they
> start with to get the best initial experience? I'm yet to evaluate them
> in depth on any OS so I can't say. I'm guessing QBzr is looking a good
> starting point on Windows, bzr-gtk on Linux, and not-a-clue on OS X?

Actually, when you asking about GUI there is only one answer: complete 
standalone GUI is only one -- Olive (bzr-gtk). For Windows it will be 
nice to have TortoiseBzr, but actually this google summer project now 
stopped. I don't know how close it to final stage though.

> Which web app would we bundle if we had to pick one? webserve?

loggerhead rely on Turbogears, but webserve should works completely 
standalone. I think the answer here is obvious.

> loggerhead? Which is easiest to install and maintain for a user on their
> desktop? To put some context around this question, Git comes bundled
> with GitWeb. I've also heard of some users selecting Mercurial primarily
> because hgweb was much loved over alternatives for other tools. It's
> cool we offer as much choice as we do. But let's get our users moving
> and productive by picking one for them initially.

> What core plugins should we be bundling? bzrtools, difftools and
> extmerge stand out to me. Is rebase wanted enough to be bundled as well?

What is difftools? It seems that this plugin is not mentioned on Plugins 
wiki page.

> Summary
> -------
> 
> If anyone is looking for a way to contribute, improving packaging and
> testing it for 1.0 has a high value-to-effort ratio. Another way to help
> is to simply voice your opinions given what you've learnt using Bazaar
> on your platform? What plugins should we recommend to new users to make
> them productive quickly?
> 
> 1.0 is fast approaching. One of the positives out of taking that leap of
> faith is that it tends to focus attention on reducing the barriers to
> entry: installation, documentation, etc. I hope the above email triggers
> some useful discussion on these fronts. And action!

I'm writing couple of post about status of plugins supports on Windows.
I don;t want to maintain all possible plugins on Windows, especially GUI 
ones, especially when I don't use them, even occasionally. So despite 
all compliments you gave me, the situation on Windows is not very 
optimistic from my point of view.

E.g. bzr-svn: I ran selftest on my machine and have more than 50% errors 
in tests. I can't say is something wrong with my machine or with win32 
support in bzr-svn itself. Packaging bzr-svn is also raise some 
questions: do I need package all dependent svn libs or only python 
wrapper for svn? And in the end I could package bzr-svn for bzr 1.0, but 
later there should be someone else to do this work.

Situation with Olive is a bit harder. There is no trivial solution how 
it should be packaged. In my understanding there should be additional 
executable olive.exe to run GUI interface. It's doable, there is nothing 
impossible, but someone should build it for Windows, and not wait that 
I'll do all work myself.

Because I want to run Russian translation for Bazaar user docs.
IMO docs translations is also very important question, it isn't?

Alexander



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