Re: Release goals for 3.6

[Lukas Reichlin]

On 02.08.2011, at 16:41, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:

> 2011/8/2 Lukas Reichlin <address@hidden>:
>> On 02.08.2011, at 07:51, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
>> 
>>> Somewhat related to the above, I'm a little worried with how
>>> difficult binary distribution seems to have been for the 3.4.x
>>> series, and I wish we would avoid this for 3.6. There isn't any
>>> excuse on my side with Debian, just haven't gotten around to making
>>> packages, which is embarrassing because compiling here is easier
>>> than on Macintosh operating systems or Windows, but we should try
>>> to at least make sure we can get Octave compiling on non-free OSes
>>> or try to not make it harder for them. Jacob's GUI has an important
>>> problem for Windows here because it's using ptys. Michael Goffioul
>>> (I think?) seems to be skeptical that cygwin is the solution here.
>>> Is there anything else we can do to make Windows distribution
>>> easier?
>> 
> 
>> IMHO fully functional and up-to-date binaries for Windows and
>> Macintosh are of utmost importance:
> 
> Yes, of course, absolutely no debate, and we're having a lot of
> trouble with 3.4 to produce those. How can we avoid this for 3.6? It's
> a very important problem.
> 
> - Jordi G. H.

A few ideas:
- For psychological reasons, binaries are offered on the Octave page, not the 
Octave-Forge page.
- A concerted effort (kind of binary sprint :-) to address all building 
problems.
- Once the build problems are solved, build binaries for each development 
snapshot such that new problems are recognized at an early stage.
- A release is not a release without binaries for all supported platforms. If 
Octave developers are not able to build binaries, who will be anyway?
- Some sort of designated binary manager, similar to the job of a release 
manager.

Lukas