On Jun 11, 11:03 am, Nicolas Pelletier <[email protected]> wrote: > So in Yuvs comment, I'll foot the first 10$. Specially if it can enable an > install kit (or zip... I don't care) in both 32 and 64 bit to come out on a > regular basis.
neither your bucks nor my comments are worth much without somebody committed to build for distribution on the Windows platform the same way Harry is committed to distribute on the Mac platform. Allard brings it to the point with his statement that the hardest part is "testing for release quality". It's an often underestimated effort, particularly on a "regular basis". And no matter how many people contribute to testing, there is some basic that the builder himself can't delegate. Setting up an initial built based on an up to date SDK is a matter of a few hours; creating the installer is really simple. But one can't assume that every build and installer coming out from that initial setup is good for production, especially if that setup is on a machine used for other tasks as well, like development. If I was to embark on this task again, I'd install a virtual machine exclusively dedicated to the task of building the installer. Even within a virtual machine, maintaining an up to date SDK is not trivial, especially when there are so many moving parts. It was much more work than I could imagine back in the 0.7.0 days when I was a Windows user and contributor. For 0.8.0 I still somehow updated the SDK on my box, but lost interest as I moved to Ubuntu. I am afraid that you are expecting a bit too much for 10$ when you state "32 and 64 bit on a regular basis". Would you pay the 10$ on a "regular basis" too? AFAIK 32/64 bit on Windows means doubling the required effort in contrast to just 32 or just 64. Would you pay 2x10$ to support two platforms? The "regular basis" has been a wish for ever since I joined the project. From time to time there was an intense effort to put out a fresh SDK, but updates and maintenance are spread around this mailing list and have not been properly documented. It ends up that whoever picks up the task has to climb again the whole ladder from the ground rather than stepping right at the top and continuing form there. That's a lot of effort = time = money. The question goes to those who have been building for Windows recently. How much money would it take to motivate you to update the documentation properly so that other users can repeat your steps? How much money would it take to motivate you to do proper testing before an initial alpha distribution? How much money would it take to motivate you to provide beta versions for users to test and give you feedback, and for you to act on that feedback and improve your package? Assuming, of course, that money is a motivator. If the answer is 1000$ (which would not be unreasonable IMHO), it would take 100 people like you, Nicolas. 200 if the goal is 32 and 64 bit. And that's just for a one-off. For an ongoing effort - say for every officially released tarball - it would be 3 times more people (we have about 3 releases per year currently). So the question is: are there 300 Win32bit users and 300 Win64bit users willing to chip in 10$/year? and is there a Windows user willing to take 1000$ per release and move from a released tarball to an installer that is useful and usable for Windows users? Given our download statistics on SourceForge, the user base is there. We had over 100.000 downloads of the 2009.4.0 version for Windows alone. If 0.1% of those users would chip in 10$/year the estimated budget of 1000$ per release would be achieved. It's up to Windows users / builders to take the initiative. At the project level we've been favorable to such a solution for a long time, but none of the developers has the resources to maintain Windows binary distribution. Yuv -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hugin and other free panoramic software" group. A list of frequently asked questions is available at: http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx
