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Choice of update channel for eCS / OS2

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Eirik Romstad:
As some of the comments on Firefox 31.6 are quite distant from its headline, I have chosen to start a new tread.


--- Quote ---P. S. The worst thing is that the very valuable OS/2 developers time is carelessly wasted on solving irrelevant problems of users failing to comprehend the readme file.
--- End quote ---

I am willing to bet $100 that Boris does not work with sales  :).  While I think it is important to have something substantial to sell, sales should not be disregarded as irrelevant.  If IBM had been better at promoting OS/2 in the 1990s, OS/2 may have been the leading operating system of today.  All our issues on missing drivers, appropriate software, way to few  development resources, etc. would have been a non-issue.  Unfortunately, these issues are real problems for OS/2 / eCS that contribute to leaving us where we currently are.

Any user, techie or non-techie, contributes to the development of OS/2 / eCS by paying for the operating system or for licensed software, and by providing feedback.  Admittedly, non-techie contributions are not as large as from those actively taking part in software development, but their contributions are not zero (or even negative) as Boris' statement above suggests.  Please, treat each other respectfully - we are too few to loose anyone.

However, Boris' remark touches upon one important issue - developers need to agree on a suitable and modern update channel.  Rpm-yum is one of those in some sense, but it has a high user threshold.  Moreover, it does not come without some effort as well. As for any update channel, developers need awareness on changes to the system.  Choosing an update channel that attracts rather than sends users away cannot be wrong?

ivan:

--- Quote ---However, Boris' remark touches upon one important issue - developers need to agree on a suitable and modern update channel.
--- End quote ---

I would go further than that and say that developers and USERS need to agree on just how updates will take place.

We have WarpIn which works (yes, it does mean that the developers need to know how to write the install script) and then, out of the blue, we find that we have to use RPM/YUM, a problematic system that is being replaced by Linux because of the problems  - the least of which is that the user has to have a reliable WAN connection.  If you don't have the WAN connection you are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Boris:

--- Quote from: Eirik Romstad on August 01, 2015, 04:08:22 am ---I am willing to bet $100 that Boris does not work with sales  :).  While I think it is important to have something substantial to sell, sales should not be disregarded as irrelevant.

--- End quote ---

Eirik, can you please clarify how do you justify your claim of logical equivalence of the following predicates?

--- Quote ---problems of users failing to comprehend the readme file are irrelevant
--- End quote ---
and

--- Quote ---sales are irrelevant
--- End quote ---

I can come up with an only assumption: you think bww bitwise works GmbH sells the Firefox port.

Otherwise I do not understand how spending dmik's time on solving problems of users which are caused only by their incapability to manage their system environment themselves and their blind refusal to use a tool that does just this for them.

I would bet you'd rather want dmik to work at porting Firefox, not as a first line support engineer.

This causes pain to me. Every time I see somebody searching (in WGet distributions on Hobbes!..) a library or a dependency (I have even made this...), or somebody with a whole shitload of different versions of everything everywhere on their systems... it hurts. And then they post issues at GitHub.


Ivan, I see you blame me in the neighbor thread I ignore your posts, but here is what.
You've also ignored a response to you regarding local repositories, and...

This debates are meaningless and are not making anyone more happy.
I am not going to heavily participate and argue with every statement I don't agree with.

I'll now better continue working on trying to solve this very exact problem.

Dave Yeo:

--- Quote from: ivan on August 01, 2015, 10:45:43 am ---
--- Quote ---However, Boris' remark touches upon one important issue - developers need to agree on a suitable and modern update channel.
--- End quote ---

I would go further than that and say that developers and USERS need to agree on just how updates will take place.

We have WarpIn which works (yes, it does mean that the developers need to know how to write the install script) and then, out of the blue, we find that we have to use RPM/YUM, a problematic system that is being replaced by Linux because of the problems  - the least of which is that the user has to have a reliable WAN connection.  If you don't have the WAN connection you are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

--- End quote ---

I don't have a WAN connection and am managing to use RPM/YUM by using wget to fetch packages and having a local repository. It's not the best but it does work.
The real problem we have is a crappy old DLL system. We're limited to 8.3 name space, DLLs need to have the same internal name as the external name.  It is hard to version DLLs.
A package manager is one solution as it stores a database of everything installed with it. Unluckily a package manager does fail if the users are also installing software by other means, which OS/2 users are used to doing.
There's also the problem that there are only a couple of developers doing all the heavy lifting. Following Firefox development, dmik has done a lot of time consuming work to get our port working fairly well and the package manager saves him time so we're stuck with doing things the way he prefers.
Personally, if I had the bandwidth, I'd post 2 versions with one being statically linked.

Eirik Romstad:
@Boris: I have never claimed that people should not try to read (and understand) the readme files.  On the contrary.  What I am saying is that some times the readme files require a level of technical knowledge that many users do not have.  Along the same lines: if it is not very time consuming to make installation of updates a bit more user friendly, why not do it.  I think it will solve a lot of problems (installs are correct and things work rather than developers having to do case-by-case explanations), and we lower the user threshold.

Regarding the second point on sales.  It was not meant literally, but like making people adopt certain perspectives.  I apologize if that was unclear.

Still, I stand by my two main claims:

* It is important that we treat each other respectfully and to avoid driving people away - we need more OS/2 / eCS users.
* Agreeing on a modern and user friendly way of installing updates will save many people, developers included, a lot of time and provide additional enthusiasm for OS/2 / eCSI hope this clarifies matters.  We may still disagree on some issues, but that is healthy as long as the discourse brings us forward.

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