Re: Remove the binary distributions?

On Sep 27, 2011, at 5:25, Thomas Leonard wrote:

> There's quite a lot of complexity (and slowness) in the E build for 
> producing platform-specific releases (e.g. E-win32-x86-0.9.3a.zip). Is 
> anybody using these?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have in the past used the Mac SWT releases while trying to get SWT to work. This little use case would probably be better served by a little note about "where to get SWT", but see below.

> How would people feel about having a single E release (just puredist), 
> without any jars? This means that people writing SWT applications would 
> be responsible for distributing swt.jar with their application somehow 
> (e.g. using a Maven pom.xml, a 0install feed, or bundling a copy).

In theory, SWT is to be the standard GUI library for EoJ. *.e-swt scripts (such as those included in the EoJ distribution) should just work out of the box.

In practice, considering that SWT is native code where the rest of E isn't, and variously platform/version-dependent, I think it would be OK to say "get SWT <prominent link to specific instructions here> if you want to use these GUI programs".

Possibly relevant: I am in favor of simplifying EoJ's build process.

Higher-level point: I think we should reconsider to what degree we want to be writing E programs that are tied to Java at all.

> We could make the rune "run" command depend on SWT in the 0install feed 
> so that the SWT example scripts continue to work without extra effort 
> (for people using 0install). That would avoid making every E program 
> depend on SWT (e.g. headless servers). People not using 0install or a 
> distribution package manager would need to install SWT for their 
> platform manually.

I need some context.

Who uses 0install other than you?

What do you mean by 'the rune "run" command'? Rune does not have anything I would consider subcommands.

My understanding of 0install is that package are identified with their entry points. If rune depends on SWT, how do you get headless E without SWT?

-- 
Kevin Reid                                  <http://switchb.org/kpreid/>