[Zope3-dev] Re: Windows eggs

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Tres Seaver wrote:
>>>> I realize that those aren't final releases, but they (most probably) 
>>>> haven't changed significantly after these releases were made, which 
>>>> would make it a waste of time if I had to tag and tarball them just for 
>>>> the sake of a different version ID.
>>> Doing proper release management can't reeally be called a waste of time
>>> (that would include documenting exactly what *has* changed).
>> Right. *Proper* release management. I believe we have a volunteer 
>> release manager for that and for Zope 3.4 it's not me.
> 
> Right:  you are asking that somebody do the release manager's job, or at
> least part of it.  I was trying to point out that doing only a partial
> job (making binary installers for alphas) is likely to be troublesome.

Well, it's what Jim and Adam said they would be willing to do. Since 
Christian (the release manager for Zope 3.4) didn't create the Win32 
eggs for the alphas and betas, I think it's legitimate to take them up 
on their offer to create the builds.

> Note that under our proposed release regime, depending on an alpha makes
> *you* and alpha, too;  is that what you want?

YES. I and others want to *test* the egg story on Windows. Apparently 
nobody has done this before (otherwise it wouldn't be such a big hassle 
to get those binary eggs) and I'd like to actually tests this before we 
release stuff as final. Is that so wrong?

>>> Again, what kind of Windows user are you expecteing (wanting) to test these eggs?
>> People who want to try out Zope 3.4 on Windows, in particular those who 
>> want to try out Grok, the buildout instance recipes and Zope-on-Paste on 
>> Windows.
>>
>> We've done some Zope 3.4 alpha and beta released, why shouldn't we make 
>> Windows eggs for those so that people can actually *try* them before a 
>> final release?
> 
> Until somebody makes a "release manager" call that a package is stable
> enough for beta, I'd be really reluctant to ask people to test using
> binaries:  they won't be able to develop or apply patches to test fixes,
> for instance, to bugs in the C extensions.
> 
> Making it easier (via documentatin, likely) for *anybody* with an
> appropriate toolchain to build Zope's eggs on Windows would help, both
> by removing the need to built them before a real release, and by getting
> better feedback on platform-specific problems earlier in the cycle.

I tried to follow instructions from the web on how to get such a 
toolchain running on my Windows machine (see post scriptum to my very 
first email). It failed with an obscure error when compiling the 
extension. So, it seems at the moment there's no easily deployable 
toolchain. Having Windows test alphas and betas that they compile 
themselves is all fine and dandy, but unless we have a way for them to 
do that, this remains all but a pious wish.