Hi,
I was just thinking about software distribution... the fans of
web-applications have it right: when a bug is corrected, the user see
the correction immediately. No "releases" needed. Of course, webapps
have other problems (latency, no drag'n drop..). But the idea of fixing
something and automatically "push it" to the client is a good one.
In fact, we can have this behavior with cvs (or svn), if people use
them. The problem is that many won't -- too arcane for them.They will
just grab the tgz or the binaries and run the installer or dnd the
program.
But what if we had some kind of file containing all the information to
grab a cvs ? We could just say to the users "download this file,
double-click on it". That will launch Installer.app.
Installer.app will then grab the ChangeLog, or just list the available
tags, and propose that to the user;
the user choose a version (a tag) or the bleeding edge, and click on
the "install" button. Installer.app grab the sources and launch the
compilation / installation.
It's not very difficult to do in fact (it's just a shell over cvs/svn),
but it would provide a much smoother experience for people, and will
let us have an easy way of "pushing" new versions. The installer could
even check regularly the tags to warn the user for any new releases.
Of course we could continue issue tgz releases anyway, for people that
don't want to compile, but nowadays compilation is very fast, so..
What do you think ?
--
Nicolas Roard
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-Arthur C. Clarke
