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great!
My idea was to offer cocoon creator. It's a web application (at the of this writing in PHP -- I will convert it to cocoon if the concept is good enough) asking you some build-specific question (JDK to build, Cocoon version, blocks to include). Based on this information it will start to build a customized version of cocoon and offer it to download to user.
I have considered doing something like this with Ant which has built in support for interactive properties which can also be scripted for later rebuilds. But I think your idea of doing it over the web is worth pursuing (except you're stuck paying for the bandwidth).
As I see it, these are the problems people have with the build process:
1) emotional shock at having to build at all.
2) java environment problems (jvm instead of jdk, JAVA_HOME not set, endorsed libs problem?)
3) winzip empty libs problem
4) failure to read INSTALL.txt
5) trouble deciphering the options in build.properties and blocks.properties
6) misinterpreting build output (warnings!=failure !)
the web based builder idea helps with all of those, except postpones the problem with java environment (#2).
I remember a friend doing this, but for the Linux kernel :()
This will all be obsolete when 2.2 comes around and we have "real" blocks. Until then, why not explore some ideas?
Another idea: Someone should built a naked Cocoon, and we could distribute it on BitTorrent. We'd just need lots of people hosting it.
Tony
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