bzr-windows team mailing list archive

[Ian Clatworthy <ian.clatworthy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Adrian Wilkins wrote:

>> 1. Someone volunteers to summarise the consensus and list any
>>    outstanding issues to be decided or further investigated.

Thanks for this. It was nice to see several people summarise the thread
to date, even if those summaries differed quite a bit. :-)

>  * Continue with Inno Setup for installer
>    * Explore demand for MSI installer

So I want a firm decision on this by Monday. In my mind, there are three
semi-independent issues:

1. Need. Are there teams that won't adopt Bazaar because MSI features
   are a requirement to meet their IT policies? (If so, are those
   teams realistically going to adopt Bazaar 2.0 anyhow or will they
   wait another year or two, i.e. until DVCS is perceived as mature.

2. Perception. Will hard-core Windows developers dismiss Bazaar as
   "Windows technology ignorant" because of choice of installer
   technology? (This actually worries me more than #1.)

3. FOSS tool maturity. Is WiX or equivalent capable of delivering
   a functional and reliable installer?

We should discuss the first 2. For the 3rd, I'd really like to see
someone prototype a Bazaar installer using WiX say. Is anyone is a
position to try that in coming days?

>  * Make plugins selectable subcomponents of the installer
>    * Hierarchical component trees seem possible according to help
>  * Don't install TBZR by default

I believe everyone agreed to these.

>  * Consider bundling
>    * bzr-explorer
>    * bzr-xmloutput

I believe the majority of people agreed to these. I'd go slightly
further and bundle the plugins listed here,
http://bazaar-vcs.org/Roadmap/BatteriesIncluded, given it seems unlikely
we'll get them into the core in time for 2.0. An important thing about
these plugins is that that have no external dependencies so adding them
*ought* to be easy.

> Documentation

>  * Easiest is PDF of the user docs and reference
>  * CHM would be a more functional option properly paginated and indexed.
>    * Take as a benchmark the excellent TSVN help module.

CHM is HtmlHelp, right?? If so, that's my leaning *today* simply because
I'm yet to work out exactly how to convert our sphinx-docs to PDF via
Latex. It shouldn't be hard or even take that long, though my higher
priority this week and next is improving the content itself.

In comparison, it ought to be dirt-simple for someone on Windows with a
HTML Help compiler to convert the docs today:

  1. install sphinx and the html help compiler
  2. grab the bzr source
  3. make docs
  4. cd doc
  5. make.bat htmlhelp
  6. <compile>

Can someone try that?

>> 3. Someone volunteers to build an initial cut.
> 
> I've managed to build it before ; the most challenging part on Windows
> is building bzr-svn which requires a little dedication to get the build
> environment working

If that's volunteering :-) , I'm sure John or someone else could help
you get the issues you listed sorted.

>> 4. We have a co-ordinated testing effort to validate it on multiple
>>    OS versions.
> 
> I could provide testing environments on Window 98 (if I can find the
> disk!), Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 7, but I'd rather limit
> that to running `bzr selftest` and maybe hacking something together to
> detect deltas in the list of failing tests. Probably best to limit
> testing to XP and Vista / 7 as well.

That would be wonderful. I also want to make sure the install works on
each platform, though that doesn't have to be you doing that.

>> 5. Someone volunteers to maintain it.
>>
> 
> I'll be on holiday the last two weeks of August ; but my laptop is going
> with me and the locations I'll be staying at at least claim they have
> internet access. This should actually give me more time, paradoxically.

:-)

Ian C.