Jacopo, I completely agree that there should be an easy way to download. I think that I disagree with how and what should be made available.
OFBiz should distribute the most recently released version in the same way as other ASF projects. See http://www.apache.org/dev/#releases. New users want to evaluate something that works immediately. The "build.xml Still Not Working" thread on the user ML is an example of an experience that a new user should not have. Trunk and weekly builds are great for existing users that want to try out new features and bug fixes. However, these types of builds frequently have missing bits - like documentation - that result in a negative experience for a new user. If 4.0 is not ready for release then is there an earlier version that could be used? The 4.0 release branch has been around for 5 months. What are the criteria that need to be satisfied in order to release? Gavin :) -----Original Message----- From: Jacopo Cappellato [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: October 20, 2007 2:03 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [email protected] Subject: Downloading OFBiz with minimal prerequisites WAS: [Re: Downloading OFBiz] It seems that the original thread has been hijacked by the Linux enthusiasts :-) so I'm restarting it now from here. Here is the content of the original message: I think that we should provide an easy way to download (by ftp) a compressed archive to the ones that are just interested in evaluating the product. *Minimal* prerequisites should be necessary to download and run OFBiz in this way so that users with a low bandwidth connection to the Internet, and running on a box with Jdk 1.5 installed would be able to download (possibly in multiple chunks) a compressed archive, unpack it and run "ant run-install". Of course, as soon as the version 4.0 will be officially released, they will have a file to download; however I don't think that the release 4.0 will be the right version to consider for an evaluation... the trunk is the best option and we should encourage people to see it in action. A simple solution is this: create a weekly or, better (as suggested by Jacques), monthly svn snapshot (svn export), then compress it and publish it somewhere in a very visible area of the main page of the website; we could also provide a link to the "main new features of the month" (e.g. http://docs.ofbiz.org/x/-Qs). What do you think? Jacopo
