[maemo-developers] Fwd: Application Manager and Extras-devel: Dealing with unstable software

[From: gary liquid]

hmmm, I inadvertently sent mails directly to Marius instead of to the list
by default.
I had intended to send them via the ML in general.

what follows is the mails between myself and Marius, sorry for the
confusion:


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marius,

what a lot of work, people have been developing and beta testers have been
using those development packages in private repositories for years now.

You are right that users on desktop systems might be more willing to
undertake a configure/make/make install cycle from source because everything
is ready and prepared on their device.

on maemo this simply isnt the case and the number of people with active
stable development environments is a LOT less than the number of people
willing to test out and report back on software.

in the past this wasnt a problem, because a developer could ask users to
come onboard their private repository (like repository.liqbase.net - fake
doesnt exist yet) and test a packaged version of an app without conflicting
with canola or xournal or anything else.

Now, we have been nicely asked to close these private repositories and now
its indicated for us to make a complete brainfuck of a sidestep and force
willing participants to either completely install scratchbox and mess their
head up doing stuff, or we lose their valuable assistance.

i think thats unacceptable and we need to find a way to allow best of both
worlds, I respect and value the help of any beta testers and we want to make
life easy for them to get involved.

gary (lcuk on #maemo)



#####################################################################################


"ext gary liquid" <liquid at gmail.com> writes:

> [...] and now its indicated for us to make a complete brainfuck of a
> sidestep and force willing participants to either completely install
> scratchbox and mess their head up doing stuff, or we lose their
> valuable assistance.

That's not what I was proposing.  It's just one of the options.  In
order of increasing work for the developer:

 - Let users compile the devel branch from source
     (Wont work for Maemo applications, but maybe for libraries)

 - Make separate packages for the devel branch that replace the
  packages from the stable branch
     (The sweet spot for Maemo, I'd say)

 - Make separate packages for the devel branch that can be installed and
  used in parallel with the packages from the stable branch
     (Lot's of trouble for little gain in a single user system)

There is also:

 - Stop releasing stable versions until the devel branch is
  released as stable
     (Not nice for users of your stable version and has all the
      problems that Ryan mentioned in his original mail)

> i think thats unacceptable and we need to find a way to allow best of both
> worlds, I respect and value the help of any beta testers and we want to
make
> life easy for them to get involved.

I think the sweet spot mentioned above is it.  I didn't say that clearly
because I wanted people to make up their own minds about the relative
merits.


Let's discuss this on the list.


#####################################################################################


agreed marius,

but the fact remains that until recently the accepted way for a developer to
allow beta testers to come on board was to build their standard package as
they do anyway and have it available on their own personal repository, the
only work for a beta tester was clicking an .install file or updating from
h-a-m.

this worked nicely for a large number of applications but its major
disadvantages were dependencies and bitrot.

as a maemo developer I cannot easily compile other peoples packages from
source.
I build and compile on the 810 itself and whilst it works perfectly for me,
it does not include ./configure so most packages are not available to me.
I have got scratchbox locked away on a rarely touched vmware image, its
possible for me to dig it out whenever i hear aobut an update, but certainly
not practical.

The point of testing is also testing the package itself, if a developer has
to create 2 distinct packages, one for testing and one for real how does the
developer test that his live package includes everything required and
installs and uninstalls cleanly?

The only real way to ensure its valid is to allow a user to beta-test the
actual package.

quite simply, if we cannot use -devel to allow beta testers to test our
actual software why are we recommending developers use it?

gary
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