Re: Performance issues on Windows, suggests a MSVC build

[fork]

John W. Eaton <jwe <at> octave.org> writes:

> 
> On 22-Jun-2011, fork wrote:
> 
> | (1) I bet there is a "conversion rate" at which a user becomes a
> | contributor for open source software.  My guess is 1/1000 per year
> | (probably an over-hopeful number really),
> | whatsoever.  If I am right, this is why it is important to get a lot
> | of windows users to just use first, so that the 1/1000 who can
> | actually develop will start pitching in.  Otherwise, this 1/1000
> | will never hear of you at all.
> 
> So we (who are not very interested or knowledgeable about Windows)
> have to develop and distribute a simple to install Windows binary so
> that we can get contributors to help us with Windows?

Yes (I say as an interested but ignorant party).  I think the bigger problem is
that the build process on windows is not maintained directly and is a mess. 
Personal experience:  If I could jump in and make incremental changes to the
windows version and build system, I would, just as I would help fund development
incrementally if I could.  However, my guess is that there is about 80 hours
between now and my first compile, and I don't have that time or expertise, just
like I don't have thousands of dollars to pay for you or someone smarter than me
to hack at an unpleasant task for the 40 hours it needs.

>  Don't we
> already have that with the 3.2.4 release that is on source forge?

We have a binary that was hacked together once in an unreproducable environment
(I mean that with nothing but respect for the people who put it together, just
in terms of continuous improvement and introspection).  It also smells of
neglect given the recent 3.4.2rc1, which will turn people off.

> That's been downloaded more than 300,000 times since March 2010. 

Wow.

> So
> shouldn't we have something like 300 Windows developers by now?

Ok, let me modify my conversion rate to 1/500,000 ;)  We are just about to get
the first one -- I can feel it!

> I remain unconvinced that there are many people out there who are
> competent Windows programmers who are also interested in developing
> free numerical software.  My guess would be that most everyone who is
> interested in developing free software as a volunteer has abandoned
> Windows.  I'm OK with being wrong about this, but we already have a
> Windows binary that should be sufficient to get competent programmers
> started and it has been downloaded a fairly large number of times, yet
> I'm still waiting to see the Windows programmers contributing.

I think there may be a lot of folks like me:  I would never volunteer to do
anything on windows ever unless there were a payoff, (yuck!), but I work for pay
in a windows environment and would like to make that is un-painful as possible
(and run the same simulation code on all three big OS'es).  If I could
contribute incrementally to effect that, I would, but the stable build system
isn't there yet.
 
Let me stress that one can't make incremental improvements to the windows
version as it stands, which may be a block to others besides myself.

I wish I had a solution, really, that didn't involve other people working really
hard on something I don't understand.  Sorry....

> jwe