Call for participation: Bazaar Windows team

[Ian Clatworthy]

Hi all,

Despite that fact the Bazaar on Windows still often feels like a
linux-tool-that-runs vs a genuinely-native-tool-that-rocks, the
standalone installer for bzr 1.13 has been downloaded over 36,000 times!
We clearly have a solid user base on Windows and, with bzr 2.0 (and
Bazaar Explorer 1.0 btw) around the corner, there are plenty of reasons
for us to expect that user base to grow a *lot* in coming months.

This this is mind, I believe the time has now come for us to create a
dedicated bzr-windows mailing list for community members looking for a
forum with a higher signal-to-noise ratio about issues on Windows and
the overall experience there. What installers should we ship, which one
to recommend when, what third-party tools to use as add-ons, VS
integration, etc. - the things Windows users care about that many of us
Linux folk don't think much about. More broadly, the team will be a
special interest group interested in discussing, enhancing, testing and
supporting Bazaar on Windows.

To join, please visit https://launchpad.net/~bzr-windows and sign up to
the team. A request for a mailing list for that team is in the queue and
should hopefully be approved shortly.

NOTE: You do *not* need to be a bzr developer to join this team, just
interested in making the user experience on Windows a better one.

To give everyone some idea of the topics *I* hope to discuss on that
list, I'll be emailing team members in coming days, asking them to think
about the installation experience we want to offer for Bazaar 2.0. Once
that's clearer, I'll be looking for volunteers to test installers later
this month on various platforms, e.g. XP, Vista, 2000, 7 beta, 32 vs 64
bit, etc.

So please join up and get involved. You'll be amazed at just how big a
difference some little changes can make! With 2.0 scheduled for later
this month, there's no better time than now ...

Ian C.

PS: If there's interest, I'll set up a similar team for OS X users.