Dave Neary <dneary@xxxxxxx> writes: > Another reason may be that it is difficult to build the development > version because it depends on released versions of some libraries that > are not included yet in the major GNU/Linux distributions (e.g., GTK+ > version 2.2.2). both debian unstable, mandrake and redhat provides gtk+2.x for quite a long time. there's no problem in providing both gtk+-1.2.x and gtk+-2.x in a distro. > Also, the number of dependencies for GIMP 1.3.x is much higher than > the number of dependencies for GIMP 1.2.x, so it is more difficult > to have a working build environment for the 1.3.x version. this is a valid point for: - users of very old distributions - non developer users (that is most end users) - windows users (for which getting both a working development suit and enough knowledge to build something with required dependancies is probably not easy) > Do we need binary distributions? > -------------------------------- > > There was a discussion about binary distributions. This may help > people to try some versions of the GIMP (especially the development > versions) without having to compile everything. However, > maintaining binaries is a lot of work, even if we only maintain > binaries supplied by others. In addition, this would bring some > additional responsabilities that we do not want to have. For these > reasons, it was decided that www.gimp.org would not host any > binaries but would link to the pages of those who are providing > binaries for various platforms. yes development and packaging (well binary tarball is some kind of packaging) are two different tasks. you can either: - leave it to distributions (after all gimp-1.3 is already provided in mandrake contribs and in debian unstable) - leave it to a nightly build system (see mozilla) - leave it to another specialized team (aka you need one people that sometimes build windows binaries and someone who sometimes build static gimp for linux) > Is Bugzilla too hard to use for new users? > ------------------------------------------ > > It was suggested to make it easier for users to submit bug reports, > for example by having an e-mail address to which bug reports can be > sent without having to register to Bugzilla (we already have such an > address, although it is not widely known). This proposal was rejected > because most of the bug reports (especially from new users) are > incomplete and require additional information. If the user does not > have a Bugzilla account, it is not possible to rely on the automatic > notification system to send messages to the user when a comment is > added to their bug report or when the status of their bug report > changes. even if bug reporting by mail may not look suitable, being able to anwser bugzilla by mail is a must. it saves quite a lot of time and is often see as more easy to use by developers (at least here at mdk). there're several extensions that do this (see freshmeat.net or soft/bugs module in mandrake cvs).
