Re: Distributing unstable Windows binaries

[Carnë Draug]

On 13 July 2014 14:10, Philip Nienhuis <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Markus Bergholz and I were discussing putting up unstable Windows binaries
> (3.9.0+ & 4.1.0+) on mxeoctave.osuv.de.
> Before proceeding I'd like to have the opinions of other Octave developers
> on this.
>
> My thoughts:
>
> - Using mxe-octave I regularly build binary Windows installers anyway from
> the gui-release and default branches (currently 3.9.0+ & 4.1.0+ combined
> into one installer). Usually soon after a merge from stable -> gui-release
> -> default.
> I use those binaries at work (always a good test), rather than stable Octave
> versions.
>
> - The unstable versions offer features (and fixes) not yet in stable that
> (some/many) users might need. Until now Linux users had a bit of an
> advantage here: even with mxe-octave the treshold for building unstable
> (Windows, or OSX) Octave versions is still significantly higher than for
> Linux users.
>
> - I could also distribute "unstable" OF package versions (in my case the io
> package) this way.
>
> - Some increase in bug reports / issues / support requests etc can be
> expected. Is this a bad thing?
>
> - User expectation needs attention. I was thinking of an Octave prompt along
> the lines of:
> "Octave <version> development snapshot <date> - use at own risk!\n>>"
> ...plus maybe some additions to the readme.
>
>
> Currently my mxe-octave build tree is somewhat outdated and a bit messy as I
> have many personal mods; so I think my current unstable Windows binaries are
> less suited for distribution. But now that mxe-octave is more or less
> feature-complete (i.e., Ghostscript has been added) I have a good reason to
> upgrade :-)  and it's easier for me to supply the mxe changes to comply with
> the GPL.
>
> Thought, opinions?

I don't think this is a very good idea and might actually be dangerous
for Octave image. No matter how many warnings you give to the users,
they will just ignore them, and rush to the very last release. Then
they will complain it's crap when it crashes. That's the whole point
of having versions, we know it's not good enough to release and for
general use. So it's not released.

There's not even distribution of this for Linux, which would be easier
to set up. Even the Octave group in launchpad [1], which used to have
a PPA for the testing "releases", seems to now be down to the stable
versions only [2].

Carnë

[1] https://launchpad.net/~octave
[2] https://launchpad.net/~octave/+archive/ubuntu/stable