On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 8:16 AM, Matthew Kenworthy < [email protected]> wrote:
> *my personal take, and this thread does have "kvetch" in the subject :) * > > > Alien is the conceptual namespace given to managing (or at least > querying) > > > > local::lib provides a simple cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac, > probably > > > > This is terrific, but what changed over the last couple of years in PDL > that > > made this possible? > > One click installations with 2D plotting for all platforms makes all > the difference. It means that I can point collaborators to an install > package, and get them using my scripts ASAP. My collaborators don't > care at all about Alien, local::lib, CPAN or dependencies. They want > something that works without thinking about the installation or > support. > Here is a version of one-click that I would *love* to see, and which should happen, I think and hope, by this fall: cpan Task::PDL::David If I can point an interested user to a one click install of PDL and it > works, then we have a new user of PDL. As soon as they hit one > roadblock, they're *gone*. It doesn't matter if it was a non-PDL > dependency fail, they assume it's a PDL problem and they walk away. > When you can seamlessly install SciPy with one click but your build of > PDL requires knowledge of CPAN to build it, you immediately lose out > on the mindshare. > Sounds like a GUI interface to CPAN would be really helpful. Perhaps we can write something using Prima so it's cross-platform? > Unless there is a driving reason why they need to > install/configure/maintain some package, people will go with what is > (a) run by their friends/associates, so they have someone to ask them > for local help, and (b) something that has a huge online support > community with immediate response time. > > My current view of the PDL community is that there is a group of about > 100-200 people who use and run PDL code, with 10 to 20 people in > active voice on the mailing lists, and a significant fraction of these > people have used PDL for > 5 years. If anyone knows what the current > email distribution size is, it would be interesting to know. > > Matt > It turns out that if you are registered on the mailing list, you can get these details. The Perldl (users) mailing list has 175 non-digested subscribers and 29 digested subscribers. The Porters list has 51 non-digested subscribers and 6 digested subscribers. The number of people who *use* PDL could be far bigger, for all we know. Also, there are about four regulars on IRC (and two regular bots). I argue that one-click installers are only easy to implement if the underlying library is well structured. This may take some one-time effort for SciPDL, but if that's your only complaint, I would be happy to help out with that. The first step would be to put instructions on the wiki for how SciPDL is currently built. We can only enhance the build process once it's known. David -- Sent via my carrier pigeon.
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