On 11/14/06, Tim Hill <drtimhill@comcast.net> wrote:
> IMHO, the broader point is: does the svn community expect that, as a
> pre-requisite for *using* Subversion, you should be able to *build* it?
Gosh no. We don't expect that of linux or mac users! We don't expect
it from windows users either. Users depend on 'maintainers' to
release binaries for their OS.
> If the answer is *no*, then who/what entity is going
> to take up the slack and maintain these builds?
>
I thought the prior system was working just fine. For linux distros,
there were volunteer maintainers who always made sure the latest .rpm
or .deb got into the proper distribution systems. For Mac, we've
always had one or two volunteers who make nice .dmg binaries available
on their personal website. For Windows, we've always had brane (or
djh) make a private build and upload a package or two.
For all of these cases, our policy has still always been plastered on
our downloads page: "these are binary releases from volunteers. If
you want support for them, contact the volunteers, not the project."
In the case of Windows binaries, yes, it just so happened that brane
was using tigris.org itself to host the package. That is *not* the
same as "the project is supporting these binaries", though I can
totally understand the confusion, and why people would conclude that.
I have to say, I personally don't believe our project has the
energy/focus/bandwidth to start building and testing and signing
binaries for each OS. I think the current system of volunteers has
been working great. What I'd like to see happen: stop distributing
the Windows binaries on subversion.tigris.org, and put them on a
separate website. (Maybe even on red-bean or something?) That would
certainly disambiguate the misconception, and keep our project from
taking on more responsibility we can't handle.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org
Received on Tue Nov 14 20:02:05 2006