[sldev] Just askin': How are we doing?

[Alissa Sabre]

# I'm afraid this message is too late...

> Firstly, from where you stand,
> *are* we doing better overall?

Yes.

> Second, is there anything we're doing *worse*? Any recent changes you
> *don't* like?

Nothing, except for some performance issues.  (I'm sending my comments
on JIRA performance separately.)

> Lastly, what can we still do better? Are there one or two things that
> frustrate you the most, which we could make part of our third quarter
> goals?

I have an issue in my mind.  That is the synchronization of the
official (released) binary and the source distribution.

The open source community has experienced some cases that, when a new
release of offical binary came out, and the corresponding source
tarballs were distributed just after it, the source didn't produce the
same viewer as the binary releases.  Sometimes, few files were missing
from the source tarballs.  Sometimes build scripts were broken.  And
(I believe it is just once, but) on 1.4.0.1, the version number
embedded in the source file was different from the binary release,
that is, the distributed C++ source files was not exactly those for
the binary release.

Moreover, when I compare the binary from my own build and the official
binary release, I heve never seen they are same.  On Windows, I'm
using VS2005, and the different binary is just as expected.  On Linux,
I'm not sure but it may be some minor differences between
distribution.  (I'm running Fedora, BTW.)  What I'm not confortable is
that on MacOS, my own binary and official binary don't match.  I don't
understand why they can different, because I believe LL and I are
using exactly the same OS and same development tools...

I don't like that.

I wish two things to occure to solve this.

When a new version of the viewer is out, I want the source for the
release to be exported from the repository first, then that particular
set of files to be used to build a binary releases.  Distribution of
the source can be before or after the binary release, but I want the
source used to build it to be exactly the same as the source
distribution.

All the open source based products that I know of are run this way.

My one cent.

    Alissa

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