Please excuse typos--sent from my iPhone.
On 2013-05-28, at 5:35 PM, Chris Jones <jon...@hep.phy.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 28 May 2013, at 10:14 PM, Stephen Rasku <macpo...@srasku.net> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Chris Jones <jon...@hep.phy.cam.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> On 28 May 2013, at 08:12 PM, Jean-François Caron <jfca...@phas.ubc.ca>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> While download statistics might not be a good system, I do concur that
>>>> MacPorts very much would benefit from having a "discovery" mechanism by
>>>> which users find out about useful ports. Searching is nice, but it's not
>>>> discovery. Some kind of "top ports" list (however implemented) would be
>>>> useful, imho.
>>>
>>> Personally, I fail to see how a 'top ports' list would tell me much. The
>>> ports i find essential are likely very different from others, so i don't
>>> see how using some sort of a list showing the most used ports would help me
>>> in any way in choosing new ones to install. Some ports likely have a low
>>> user base, but never less are critical to those that need them, such as
>>> more esoteric ports from the science section.
>>>
>>> Maybe such a list might be of some limited interest to developers, so we
>>> know which ports are most used, and perhaps more usefully those without
>>> users, but beyond that i doubt such a list would tell us much or help
>>> users. What would help users i think would be to have a much better
>>> search/browsing interface, to allow them to browse available ports.
>>>
>>> Chris
>>
>> I think the discovery mechanism argument is valid. The search mechanism
>> only works if I know what I'm looking for. I don't know what I don't know
>> but if 90% of MacPorts users install a specific port I would check it out
>> even if I wasn't searching for it in particular. A better search interface
>> would be an improvement too but I usually just install what I know I want.
>
> I can see how for something that has a massive user base, such as the Apple
> 'App Store', a user based popularity poll would help to tell me something. I
> still maintain though that in general just because a lot of other users
> install something, does not mean i need to do the same, but if the statistics
> are large enough so you can start to discriminate within a specific category,
> it might be useful. This works for places like the App store, that has the
> massive user base needed, but i suspect MacPorts is no where near that so it
> really doesn't help.
>
> I still think a better documentation system would help more, so given a few
> keywords a user can search macports to find what ports are available and
> provide what they need, is more useful to MacPorts than some popularity based
> polling system.
>
> Chris
>
>>
>> ...Stephen
> ______________________________
I'd like to know that a port has been successfully installed, recently. IOW
that it hasn't suffered bitrot!
Craig
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