Hi and welcome to the Bazaar Mac OS X mailing list! To get the ball rolling, I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on how Bazaar 2.0 ought to be packaged on OS X. I think we should start by thinking about an ideal outcome. We can worry about reality - installer size, toolset + compilers, time remaining until 2.0 ships - after we have some agreement about what we're aiming for.
Here are some "degrees of freedom" to consider: * OS version: Panther vs Tiger vs Leopard vs SnowLeopard? * 32 vs 64 bit * multiple languages * different audiences: gui vs command line as preferred interface * bundled documentation format: HTML vs PDF vs Help Viewer * bundled python vs not? If not, assume which platform version? Also, what do we bundle vs install separately: * GUI apps: QBzr, bzr-gtk, Explorer? * other popular plugins? Here's *my* initial brain dump. Firstly, some design principles ... (a) When it comes to installers, "1" is the divine number. Thou may count to "2" but numbers larger than that are sinful. Yes, some adventurous folk may require "3" or more but it is best to promote "1", acknowledge the existence of "2" and tell those looking for "3" to chat to us behind closed doors. (b) When 2 installers are offered, the second one should offer a superset of the first, not require one installer be run, then another, then another, etc. Secondly, some suggested bundling ... (c) The recommended installer ought to have everything necessary for a great experience included. This bundle might be called something like "Bazaar Desktop x.y" and might contain ... * Bazaar Explorer * QBzr * Qt and PyQt * Documentation in Help Viewer format. The docs ought to cover the core bzr tool + some docs on the GUI tools * popular plugins (e.g. bzr-svn) * libraries/binaries supporting those plugins * core bzr This installer needs to be available in many languages. If documentation has been localised for a given language, we bundle that instead of or in addition to the English docs. (d) For hard-code command line folk and server-only usage, a "core" installer is offered. This bundle might be called something like "Bazaar Core x.y" or "Bazaar CLI x.y" and might contain ... * popular plugins? * core bzr It's fair to assume that the people choosing this installer are system administrators or hackers who know what they're doing. The build-in help system ought to be sufficient for them. If not, they can always download the documentation in their preferred format from http://doc.bazaar-vcs.org/en/. This installer might be available in multiple languages one day but it's not a requirement. In fact, an installer might be overkill and easy-install might be fine for these users. Thirdly, some thoughts on construction of the above installers ... (e) The "core/cli" installer (or easy-install support) ought to be managed as part of the bzr core project. It should be easy to automatically build and only require freely available tools to make. (f) The "desktop" installer could be managed as part of the bzr core but is arguably better handled as a separate project. It's quite feasible that we'll ship a "Bazaar Desktop 2.n Release 2" 2-3 months into the 6 month development cycle for Bazaar 2.n+1 because we may want to offer: * the latest stable core * upgraded and/or more plugins * new version of QBzr and Explorer say * better and/or more localised documentation. It therefore makes sense IMO to make that installer a separate project with its own small code base, bugs, translations, etc. And finally ... (g) Everything is up for debate. (a)-(f) are just an *example* of the sort of input I'm hoping others will provide. While I've used a MacBook Pro laptop for most of the last 3 years, I use Ubuntu on a desktop right now and under Parallels on OS X whenever I can. So I'm arguably Mac savvy but a long way from hard core. If you live and breath OS X, your opinion is 10X more important than mine. :-) Ian C. _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~bzr-mac Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~bzr-mac More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
