On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 08:14:28AM -0500, Soft wrote: > Watching an Apple Safari/Webkit developer intro talk, they did > something pretty cool: They demonstrated that you can fetch and build > Webkit using nothing but your mouse. They assume you have the > developer tools and subversion installed. The rest is su-and-say > enough that you can just copy and paste three lines from the browser. > One to do the svn fetch, one to build, and one to launch the built > app.
That is bullshit; each pasted command can start a plethora of other commands. I could write a script that downloads, build, installs AND starts SecondLife - including all shared libraries if you wish and call it "we_are_so_cool". Then you "beat" Apple Safari/Webkit: just ONE line to paste! > We're pretty far away from that. We rely on a handful of libraries > that we can't provide on our own. We need some extra development tools > installed. We have library and artwork bundles apart from the source > bundle. We have separate steps for configuring and for building. I consider most of that a plus! Having a "black box" means less flexibility and ONLY works in a FULLY (version) controlled environment. Microsoft and Apple already (attempt to) do that (and still fail often -- except during a presentation). Linux has chosen a different path. I strongly believe that a non-black box, and flexibility is worth more than a "one click" process that either works or not (that being said, I AM author of a few auto-magic scripts like http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/howto/build-nvidia-kernel and http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/vvinstall2 Look at those scripts to have an idea how "cool/good" one-click installations are... Do you really want this? Nevertheless, I wrote those for end-users that otherwise would simply have nothing at all. Developers should be able to understand each step. The more steps the better. What we NEED is a HOWTO that explains every step in detail (and thus, many copy&paste lines). Most of my HOWTO's are that way, look for example at http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/howto/encode.html or http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/svn/index.html with many little copy&paste blocks instead of one-script-fits-all. > An awful lot of new devs get lost somewhere in the process. > > Of all the above, if we were going to focus on knocking out just one > step next, which do you think would be most valuable? Which is the > highest hurdle? A new developer has NO value unless he has an overview of the process, the components involved and how everything hangs together. New developers need to learn a lot of things. The best way to learn is by doing. Changing a whole install/compile step to a one-click won't make them any wiser and they will be of no value imho. Nevertheless-- I can answer your question ;). The answer is *precisely* what the Open Metaverse Viewer project's goal is: * Only use opensource components and to remove any non-free dependencies. Your next step should be get rid of any closed source third-party libraries/software. Then we need a webpage that outlines each step for new developers to follow, rather than one powerful script. We (OMV developers) ran into this too, so you can have a look at our first attempts to outline things that need to be done on http://omvviewer.byteme.org.uk/source.shtml (courtesy Robin Cornelius) and in more detail http://omvviewer.byteme.org.uk/git.shtml > Another cool thing they do is making sure the nightly builds are > completely stand-alone. Testing a build is as simple as unpacking a > zip file and running a file in the contents - no installers permitted, > no writing to files outside that directory. The idea is that it's > possible to keep an array of nightlies and binary chop through > versions to find regressions. Mac and Linux are pretty much at this > stage. Would this be preferable for Windows BSI nightlies? -- Carlo Wood <[email protected]> _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
