setup.exe needs package name selection filter

setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[reikred]

I find that scrolling through all the packages shown in the package
selection window of setup.exe can be very tedious.

Sometime I don't know exactly what a package is called, other times
I am hunting around on a hunch, but in any case I do not want to
scroll through the whole list to find it.

So: Does setup.exe have a package selection filter that can help,
and if not, shouldn't it? I have missed this for a long time....

The whole business about clicking twice on "View" top see all
packages, installed or not, is also pretty obscure.


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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[wynfield]

I agree with reikred below.  Search, functionality would be greatly
appreciated.  It seems crude to have to scroll page by page and manually
look for a searched for package.

But, I suspect that, this isn't the list to write about setup.exe
I believe it has its own list.

reikred@gmail.com wrote:

> I find that scrolling through all the packages shown in the package
> selection window of setup.exe can be very tedious.
>
> Sometime I don't know exactly what a package is called, other times
> I am hunting around on a hunch, but in any case I do not want to
> scroll through the whole list to find it.
>
> So: Does setup.exe have a package selection filter that can help,
> and if not, shouldn't it? I have missed this for a long time....
>
> ..............

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Christopher Faylor]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 09:51:03AM +0900, wynfield@gmail.com wrote:
>I agree with reikred below.  Search, functionality would be greatly
>appreciated.  It seems crude to have to scroll page by page and manually
>look for a searched for package.
>
>But, I suspect that, this isn't the list to write about setup.exe
>I believe it has its own list.

Yes.  It's called
"make-setup.exe-demands-and-then-sit-back-and-wait-for-people-to-implement-your-profound-ideas@cygwin.com"

cgf

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[reikred]

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 09:51:03AM +0900, wynfield@gmail.com wrote:
>> I agree with reikred below.  Search, functionality would be greatly
>> appreciated.  It seems crude to have to scroll page by page and manually
>> look for a searched for package.
>>
>> But, I suspect that, this isn't the list to write about setup.exe
>> I believe it has its own list.
> 
> Yes.  It's called
> "make-setup.exe-demands-and-then-sit-back-and-wait-for-people-to-implement-your-profound-ideas@cygwin.com"
> 
> cgf
> 

Oh, I was thinking about sending it through the 
"make-email-sound-more-humble@cygwin.com" mailing-list
filter but then I forgot. ;-)

Please read it in the spirit of a suggestion of a feature
that I think could be VERY useful to a lot of people, not
just the 1% of cygwin users that know how to implement it.

rr



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RE: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Dave Korn]

reikred wrote on 20 June 2008 02:08:

> Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 09:51:03AM +0900, wynfield wrote:
>>> I agree with reikred below.  Search, functionality would be greatly
>>> appreciated.  It seems crude to have to scroll page by page and manually
>>> look for a searched for package.
>>> 
>>> But, I suspect that, this isn't the list to write about setup.exe
>>> I believe it has its own list.
>> 
>> Yes.  It's called
>>
"make-setup.exe-demands-and-then-sit-back-and-wait-for-people-to-implement-y
our-profound-ideas@cygwin.com"
>> 
>> cgf
>> 
> 
> Oh, I was thinking about sending it through the
> "make-email-sound-more-humble@cygwin.com" mailing-list
> filter but then I forgot. ;-)
> 
> Please read it in the spirit of a suggestion of a feature
> that I think could be VERY useful to a lot of people, not
> just the 1% of cygwin users that know how to implement it.
> 
> rr


  It's definitely a good suggestion, quite possibly a great suggestion.

  However, having made it, it is now just going to sit there in the mail
archive for ever and ever and not ever do anything all by itself.

  I think the point that cgf is getting at is that there is no shortage of
suggestions or good ideas or enhancement requests or wish lists nor any
difficulty in coming up with new ones.  But without a bit of getting-it-done
elbow grease, a suggestion is really very little use on its own.

    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....


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RE: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Hugh Sasse]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Dave Korn wrote:

> reikred wrote on 20 June 2008 02:08:
> 
> > Christopher Faylor wrote:
> >> 
> >> Yes.  It's called
> >>
> "make-setup.exe-demands-and-then-sit-back-and-wait-for-people-to-implement-y
> our-profound-ideas@cygwin.com"
> >> 
> >> cgf
> >> 
        [...]
> > 
> > Please read it in the spirit of a suggestion of a feature
> > that I think could be VERY useful to a lot of people, not
> > just the 1% of cygwin users that know how to implement it.
> > 
> > rr
> 
> 
>   It's definitely a good suggestion, quite possibly a great suggestion.
        [...]
>   I think the point that cgf is getting at is that there is no shortage of
> suggestions or good ideas or enhancement requests or wish lists nor any
> difficulty in coming up with new ones.  But without a bit of getting-it-done
> elbow grease, a suggestion is really very little use on its own.

This is a recurring problem for the Free Software movement.  People
want Free Software to spread, and there are efforts, such as the
attempt to get a record number of downloads for Firefox 3, as
promotional activities.  But a constant theme is that suggestions
from users are not welcomed; instead they provoke various forms of
the response: "If you want it, send a patch".  This fails to
recognise that one reason programmers don't like maintenance
programming is that reading code is more difficult than writing it.
This is a pre-requisite for changing the code.  It also fails to
recognise that a user for one project who is completely unfamiliar
with the code base, may be busy contributing to other projects, and
that some suggestions may be very much easier for someone familiar
with the code than someone who is not.  Also, if users' suggestions
are (effectively) dismissed in this way, it will prevent the use of
Free Software by non-programmers, which runs counter to the desire
for it to spread.  Most of the potential users of Free Software are
non-programmers.  [Yes, this is less so for Cygwin.]

Clearly decisions are not made in the same way as for a software
business, where finance is fundamental, but I'd suggest that unless
the needs of users are given greater status, then Free Software
advocacy will be somewhat hobbled.  But as this is a cultural problem,
and there is no immediately obvious technical solution, I'm unsure
how one might practically improve the situation.  I do think more
thought should be given to it, though.

> 
>     cheers,
>       DaveK

        Hugh

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Mark J. Reed]

Is there a ticketing/tracking system for Cygwin where one can submit
feature requests?  I think having it documented in the system as
something more than someone's wishful email would be helpful.

As far as improvements to setup.exe, I think the Cygwin team could
potentially save a lot of effort in the long term by porting and
adopting one of the Linux package managers in its place - apt or yum
or whatever.




On 6/20/08, Hugh Sasse <hgs@dmu.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Dave Korn wrote:
>
>> reikred wrote on 20 June 2008 02:08:
>>
>> > Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Yes.  It's called
>> >>
>> "make-setup.exe-demands-and-then-sit-back-and-wait-for-people-to-implement-y
>> our-profound-ideas@cygwin.com"
>> >>
>> >> cgf
>> >>
>         [...]
>> >
>> > Please read it in the spirit of a suggestion of a feature
>> > that I think could be VERY useful to a lot of people, not
>> > just the 1% of cygwin users that know how to implement it.
>> >
>> > rr
>>
>>
>>   It's definitely a good suggestion, quite possibly a great suggestion.
>         [...]
>>   I think the point that cgf is getting at is that there is no shortage of
>> suggestions or good ideas or enhancement requests or wish lists nor any
>> difficulty in coming up with new ones.  But without a bit of
>> getting-it-done
>> elbow grease, a suggestion is really very little use on its own.
>
> This is a recurring problem for the Free Software movement.  People
> want Free Software to spread, and there are efforts, such as the
> attempt to get a record number of downloads for Firefox 3, as
> promotional activities.  But a constant theme is that suggestions
> from users are not welcomed; instead they provoke various forms of
> the response: "If you want it, send a patch".  This fails to
> recognise that one reason programmers don't like maintenance
> programming is that reading code is more difficult than writing it.
> This is a pre-requisite for changing the code.  It also fails to
> recognise that a user for one project who is completely unfamiliar
> with the code base, may be busy contributing to other projects, and
> that some suggestions may be very much easier for someone familiar
> with the code than someone who is not.  Also, if users' suggestions
> are (effectively) dismissed in this way, it will prevent the use of
> Free Software by non-programmers, which runs counter to the desire
> for it to spread.  Most of the potential users of Free Software are
> non-programmers.  [Yes, this is less so for Cygwin.]
>
> Clearly decisions are not made in the same way as for a software
> business, where finance is fundamental, but I'd suggest that unless
> the needs of users are given greater status, then Free Software
> advocacy will be somewhat hobbled.  But as this is a cultural problem,
> and there is no immediately obvious technical solution, I'm unsure
> how one might practically improve the situation.  I do think more
> thought should be given to it, though.
>
>>
>>     cheers,
>>       DaveK
>
>         Hugh
>
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>

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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Eric Blake]

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Hash: SHA1

[Please avoid http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#TOFU - don't top-post]
[Please avoid feeding the spammers -
http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#PCYMTNQREAIYR ]

According to Mark J. Reed on 6/20/2008 6:23 AM:
| Is there a ticketing/tracking system for Cygwin where one can submit
| feature requests?  I think having it documented in the system as
| something more than someone's wishful email would be helpful.

The mailing list archives are as good as anything else.  You're forgetting
something fundamental - this is a volunteer process, so unless someone
volunteers to expend the resources to maintain a request tracking system,
it won't be any more effective than list traffic.

|
| As far as improvements to setup.exe, I think the Cygwin team could
| potentially save a lot of effort in the long term by porting and
| adopting one of the Linux package managers in its place - apt or yum
| or whatever.

Read the archives.  This has been repeatedly suggested, but no one has yet
proposed how to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of how you get apt or
yum first installed (how do you install cygwin1.dll with a program that
depends on the existence of cygwin1.dll?).  The reason setup.exe is the
preferred installation program at the moment is because it is the only
non-vaporware program that actually does the job of installing cygwin1.dll
without depending on cygwin1.dll.  All the talk in the world won't change
that, and since no one has contributed code otherwise, it obviously
doesn't bother anyone enough to be worth changing.  Yes, in the open
source community, patches speak louder than words.

And one thing I've noticed is the fact that every time someone brings up
this philosophy with the intent to complain about it, they are neglecting
one other fact about open source - you get what you pay for.  If you don't
like the current behavior, but can't write the patch yourself, you are
free to hire someone else to write the patch.  With enough $$, you can
probably find someone willing to spend the time to help you get your
feature added.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             ebb9@byu.net
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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Mark J. Reed]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 8:37 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
> [Please avoid http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#TOFU - don't top-post]
> [Please avoid feeding the spammers -
> http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#PCYMTNQREAIYR ]

Sorry, I need to stop using GMail Mobile to post to this list.  It
leaves me no option about either of those.

> | Is there a ticketing/tracking system for Cygwin where one can submit
> | feature requests?  I

> The mailing list archives are as good as anything else.

Not really, because they're full of all sorts of messages that are
neither defects or feature requests, and repeated requests don't get
collapsed into a single thread.

> You're forgetting something fundamental - this is a volunteer process, so unless someone
> volunteers to expend the resources to maintain a request tracking system,
> it won't be any more effective than list traffic.

Yes, it's a volunteer process.  I get that.  Pretty much every open
source project is a volunteer project.  And it's true that if there
were a tracking system, someone(s) would need to monitor it to mark
duplicates and prioritize and such.  But that might be less work than
replying to these periodic messages about why there's no tracking
system :)
Someone must be directing the overall course of the development effort
already, right?   Is there a roadmap?  Or  just a bunch of people
submitting patches as the mood strikes?

> Read the archives.  This has been repeatedly suggested, but no one has yet
> proposed how to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of how you get apt or
> yum first installed (how do you install cygwin1.dll with a program that
> depends on the existence of cygwin1.dll?).

Why does the initial installation wizard have to be the same as the
post-installation package manager?  Certainly the extra first-install
bits of setup.exe (e.g. "pick a mirror") are some of the more annoying
things about using it later on. If you take out most of the
flexibility from the initial setup, it doesn't need to have the same
capabilities as a full package manager; it can just give you the
default set of packages,  or maybe let you pick from two or three
canned sets targeted at developers and/or heavy X users.  You could
probably even use InstallShield or similar.

-- 
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 8:37 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
>> [Please avoid http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#TOFU - don't top-post]
>> [Please avoid feeding the spammers -
>> http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#PCYMTNQREAIYR ]
> 
> Sorry, I need to stop using GMail Mobile to post to this list.  It
> leaves me no option about either of those.

I assume you mean beyond doing this manually.  I feel your pain.

>> | Is there a ticketing/tracking system for Cygwin where one can submit
>> | feature requests?  I
> 
>> The mailing list archives are as good as anything else.
> 
> Not really, because they're full of all sorts of messages that are
> neither defects or feature requests, and repeated requests don't get
> collapsed into a single thread.

I think we can all agree that there would be some value in such a system
if it was well maintained and easy to use.

>> You're forgetting something fundamental - this is a volunteer process, so unless someone
>> volunteers to expend the resources to maintain a request tracking system,
>> it won't be any more effective than list traffic.
> 
> Yes, it's a volunteer process.  I get that.  Pretty much every open
> source project is a volunteer project.  And it's true that if there
> were a tracking system, someone(s) would need to monitor it to mark
> duplicates and prioritize and such.  But that might be less work than
> replying to these periodic messages about why there's no tracking
> system :)
> Someone must be directing the overall course of the development effort
> already, right?   Is there a roadmap?  Or  just a bunch of people
> submitting patches as the mood strikes?

You're making the assumption that the main Cygwin development team is a
large organization.  It's not.  Primarily, two developers work on the
Cygwin DLL and do so fairly regularly.  1 developer works on 'setup.exe'.
All others contribute patches to one side or the other as the time and
inspiration permit, some more regularly than others.  There are also
people that are responsible for various packages and update them as
needed, though a large number of packages are provided by these same
core developers and those helping with bugs/patches.  But when you boil
it all down, the team working on Cygwin internals is not large by any
stretch of the imagination and have lots of distractions already. Currently,
coordination of efforts and laying out of roadmaps at any scale is not a
formal process.  It doesn't need to be with this team size, even if you
take into account the helpful and trusty patchers.  And while there has
been talk in the past about setting up and maintaining some bugzilla or
something, it has never really gotten off the ground due to lack of
resource.  Given this as background, I think you can understand that the
current development team is not anxious to take on other tasks that would
divert their current efforts.  So, as it has been discussed in the past, any
kind of formal tracking system for issues or requests needs someone to
spearhead it to make it work and to limit the impact on the current
developers.

>> Read the archives.  This has been repeatedly suggested, but no one has yet
>> proposed how to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of how you get apt or
>> yum first installed (how do you install cygwin1.dll with a program that
>> depends on the existence of cygwin1.dll?).
> 
> Why does the initial installation wizard have to be the same as the
> post-installation package manager?  Certainly the extra first-install
> bits of setup.exe (e.g. "pick a mirror") are some of the more annoying
> things about using it later on. If you take out most of the
> flexibility from the initial setup, it doesn't need to have the same
> capabilities as a full package manager; it can just give you the
> default set of packages,  or maybe let you pick from two or three
> canned sets targeted at developers and/or heavy X users.  You could
> probably even use InstallShield or similar.
> 

Again, this has been discussed in the past.  While it would certainly be
possible to do this, it effectively means we need 2 install programs.
One would handle the install and update of the Cygwin DLL and the other
would handle the packages.  This would put an extra burden on the user
even if all the technical issues could be addressed.  I'm summarizing
the history here.  If you're interested in more details about these
old discussions, the email archives are the place to look, though you'll
have to go back 10 years or so to get to the original discussions that
brought 'setup.exe' into existence.  That doesn't mean that the subject
is closed.  There have been more recent discussions about how to bring a
package manager into this process.  But it needs to address the chicken-
and-egg problem well and have some resource to put behind it.  And now
with this statement, I fear, we've jumped back to near the start of this
thread again. :-(

Any good ideas and discussions on solutions for this issue are still
welcome, as doing so may spark others interest too.  But please don't
cover the same old ground.  Have some pity for those who have been through
these discussions before.  Or if not for us, think of the children! ;-)


-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Mark J. Reed]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
> Mark J. Reed wrote:
>> Sorry, I need to stop using GMail Mobile to post to this list.  It
>> leaves me no option about either of those.
>
> I assume you mean beyond doing this manually.

Unfortunately, no.  I don't mind rearranging quoted text manually.
What GMail Mobile does is append the original text to my message when
I send it, with email-address-containing attribution; as far as I can
determine, I have no way to alter that behavior.  The offending text
is not inserted into the text field of my reply where I can manipulate
it; all l I get there is a placeholder.  So I don't even have access
to the original text to quote it in context above the TOFU if I want
to.  And deleting the placeholder doesn't prevent the entire original
text from being appended when I hit send.

I could get around this by composing an entirely new message instead
of using the reply function, but then my "reply" would not have the
proper headers to insert it into the proper thread.

So in future I'll just refrain from replying to this list from my
mobile.  It can wait until I get back to an actual computer.

-- 
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Christopher Faylor]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:49:21PM -0400, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
> Mark J. Reed wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 8:37 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
>>> [Please avoid http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#TOFU - don't top-post]
>>> [Please avoid feeding the spammers -
>>> http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#PCYMTNQREAIYR ]
>>Sorry, I need to stop using GMail Mobile to post to this list.  It
>>leaves me no option about either of those.
>
>I assume you mean beyond doing this manually.  I feel your pain.
>
>>>| Is there a ticketing/tracking system for Cygwin where one can submit
>>>| feature requests?  I The mailing list archives are as good as
>>>anything else.
>>Not really, because they're full of all sorts of messages that are
>>neither defects or feature requests, and repeated requests don't get
>>collapsed into a single thread.
>
>I think we can all agree that there would be some value in such a
>system if it was well maintained and easy to use.

Actually, it already exists:
http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=cygwin .

But I don't know how often setup.exe developers check it.

I don't know what adding a bugzilla entry with an RFE for search inside
of setup.exe is going to accomplish given that no one is a programmer
and, if they are a programmer, they don't implicitly understand the
setup code base however.

>>>Read the archives.  This has been repeatedly suggested, but no one has
>>>yet proposed how to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of how you get
>>>apt or yum first installed (how do you install cygwin1.dll with a
>>>program that depends on the existence of cygwin1.dll?).
>>
>>Why does the initial installation wizard have to be the same as the
>>post-installation package manager?  Certainly the extra first-install
>>bits of setup.exe (e.g.  "pick a mirror") are some of the more annoying
>>things about using it later on.  If you take out most of the
>>flexibility from the initial setup, it doesn't need to have the same
>>capabilities as a full package manager; it can just give you the
>>default set of packages, or maybe let you pick from two or three canned
>>sets targeted at developers and/or heavy X users.  You could probably
>>even use InstallShield or similar.
>
>Again, this has been discussed in the past.

And, observations about choosing a mirror being "annoying" don't really
help and likely illustrate some fundamental process misunderstanding.
What would you do if you didn't choose a mirror?  Assume that the last
one you used was up to date?

Should we be spending a lot of time educating people about this so that
they can give ever-more-informed suggestions without ever stepping up to
help?

The thing that never seems to be understood in these merry-go-round
discussions is that very few of us are insightful geniuses who have
innovative new ideas for improving setup.exe.  The suggestions are
by-and-large obvious.  In general, the developers have all of these
ideas and more, if for no other reason, than they've been here longer
and have been thinking about the problem at some depth.

So, why isn't setup.exe better?  It in't because we stubbornly don't
like to make changes.  It is because no one has the time or inclination
to put man months of effort into introducing new functionality.

In projects which have a healthy number of developers, getting people to
do work is an issue of finding someone with an itch to scratch.  In
projects with four or five developers and a big user base things move
more slowly or not at all.  We tend to shy away (Cygwin 1.7 being a
notable exception) from making big changes because then we have to
support them and maybe even hear about all of the people who just loved
things the way they were and are sick of us changing things.  So
we focus on fixing bugs.

Predictions of doom because suggestions aren't warmly received and vowed
to be acted upon miss several points.  The project doesn't succeed
because Anissa-Random-User decides to grace us with a suggestion.  It
succeeds because people find it useful.

A project really flourishes when there are enough developers to keep the
project running.  Cygwin has that just barely.  No amount of indignation
is going to change that or convince a small team of busy developers to
do your bidding.

cgf

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Mark J. Reed]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 3:54 PM, Christopher Faylor  wrote:
> And, observations about choosing a mirror being "annoying" don't really
> help and likely illustrate some fundamental process misunderstanding.
> What would you do if you didn't choose a mirror?  Assume that the last
> one you used was up to date?

Ideally, once I have installed Cygwin, I should be able to say, e.g.,
"install vim", without having to repeat the whole setup wizard.
Obviously if there's no cached copy or it's out of date or the mirror
I picked is out of date, etc, then there needs to be recourse to those
options.  Also I think you're interpreting "annoying" as representing
a greater emotional investment than I had in mind; certainly there was
no "indignation" on my part.  It's really a minor thing, but it grows
out of the overloaded nature of setup.exe.

> Should we be spending a lot of time educating people about this so that
> they can give ever-more-informed suggestions without ever stepping up to
> help?

Honestly, I think more people might step up to help if you didn't
exhibit such a hostile attitude to start with.   I mean, OK, the
majority of us users are just leeches who want to get something for
nothing and complain when it doesn't work exactly the way we want it
to while hardly ever taking the time to thank or praise you for your
efforts.  This is the free-software version of How People Are, an
unfortunate reality that everyone who has to deal with the public in
any capacity must face.  It would still behoove you to accept
suggestions for improvement in the spirit in which they are offered.
Politesse goes a long way; a simple "Thank you for the suggestion;
it's been suggested before, but it's a complex issue.  Please see the
mailing list archives" would have been fine, but instead you started
right in with the snark.

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Hugh Sasse]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:49:21PM -0400, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
> > Mark J. Reed wrote:
        [...]
> Actually, it already exists:
> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=cygwin .
> 
> But I don't know how often setup.exe developers check it.

Maybe a mail to this list could be triggered by it?  Then you'd get
stuff in the mail archive where developers traditionally expect it, but
you'd also have something more searchable.  [Sorry, that's a suggestion
with no supplied implementation, but I've never looked at bugzilla code.]
> 
> I don't know what adding a bugzilla entry with an RFE for search inside
> of setup.exe is going to accomplish given that no one is a programmer
> and, if they are a programmer, they don't implicitly understand the
> setup code base however.

If that's in response to my comments, I believe you have inflated
them: it is not that *nobody* is a programmer, it is that *many* of
the users are not.  But, yes, this is a weaker form of help than
getting dedicated programmers.

        [...]
> Should we be spending a lot of time educating people about this so that
> they can give ever-more-informed suggestions without ever stepping up to
> help?

Clearly not a lot of time, and yes there are diminishing returns.
> 
> The thing that never seems to be understood in these merry-go-round
> discussions is that very few of us are insightful geniuses who have
> innovative new ideas for improving setup.exe.  The suggestions are
> by-and-large obvious.  In general, the developers have all of these
> ideas and more, if for no other reason, than they've been here longer
> and have been thinking about the problem at some depth.

True, there are a severe lack of geniuses. But there are people who,
because they are not programmers, have spent their time gaining
expertise in design and in human factors, who could make useful
suggestions.  Closing the discussion off to only developers excludes
them.  Also, this feels a little bit like the argument apocryphally
made at the end of the 19th century, that soon the patent office
would have to close "because everything has been invented". ;-)
Lateral thinking developed partly because sometimes being outside
the problem gives you a perspective that those inside it don't have.

> 
> So, why isn't setup.exe better?  It in't because we stubbornly don't
> like to make changes.  It is because no one has the time or inclination
> to put man months of effort into introducing new functionality.
> 
> In projects which have a healthy number of developers, getting people to
> do work is an issue of finding someone with an itch to scratch.  In

Principally, yes, but that isn't the whole story, see below.
        [...]
> 
> Predictions of doom because suggestions aren't warmly received and vowed
> to be acted upon miss several points.  The project doesn't succeed
> because Anissa-Random-User decides to grace us with a suggestion.  It
> succeeds because people find it useful.

They won't find it at all if her one unique suggestion is excluded
by the process.  The real problem here, is how to keep the good suggestions
while throwing out the rubbish.  It's not easy to solve.  Other
GNU projects find Bugzilla useful, and I think that would be a step
in a useful direction. [It may well only be "hill climbing", so we
reach a local, rather than a global, optimum.]
> 
> A project really flourishes when there are enough developers to keep the
> project running.  Cygwin has that just barely.  No amount of indignation

Yes.  So let's turn the problem around.  A new programmer turns up,
with no particular thing they want to fix.  They just want to give
something back to Cygwin.  This does happen, people get blocks of
time they don't expect occasionally.  How will they find a list of
problems worth tackling, against which they can match their skill
set?  Were I in this position, I'd rather not have to trawl the mail
archives.  That's the only mechanism suggested at
<http://cygwin.com/contrib.html>.

Would you agree that if what is wanted is more development effort,
then it should be made as easy as possible for developers to get
started?

Would you accept patches to the contrib page that suggested the use
of the existing bugzilla as a resource?  If so, then I'd like to 
add a table of contents and re-order things a bit as well.

> is going to change that or convince a small team of busy developers to
> do your bidding.
> 
> cgf
        Hugh

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Reini Urban]

Hugh Sasse schrieb:
> On Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:49:21PM -0400, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
>>> Mark J. Reed wrote:
>         [...]
>> Actually, it already exists:
>> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=cygwin .
>>
>> But I don't know how often setup.exe developers check it.
> 
> Maybe a mail to this list could be triggered by it?  Then you'd get
> stuff in the mail archive where developers traditionally expect it, but
> you'd also have something more searchable.  [Sorry, that's a suggestion
> with no supplied implementation, but I've never looked at bugzilla code.]
>> I don't know what adding a bugzilla entry with an RFE for search inside
>> of setup.exe is going to accomplish given that no one is a programmer
>> and, if they are a programmer, they don't implicitly understand the
>> setup code base however.
> 
> If that's in response to my comments, I believe you have inflated
> them: it is not that *nobody* is a programmer, it is that *many* of
> the users are not.  But, yes, this is a weaker form of help than
> getting dedicated programmers.
> 
>         [...]
>> Should we be spending a lot of time educating people about this so that
>> they can give ever-more-informed suggestions without ever stepping up to
>> help?
> 
> Clearly not a lot of time, and yes there are diminishing returns.
>> The thing that never seems to be understood in these merry-go-round
>> discussions is that very few of us are insightful geniuses who have
>> innovative new ideas for improving setup.exe.  The suggestions are
>> by-and-large obvious.  In general, the developers have all of these
>> ideas and more, if for no other reason, than they've been here longer
>> and have been thinking about the problem at some depth.
> 
> True, there are a severe lack of geniuses. But there are people who,
> because they are not programmers, have spent their time gaining
> expertise in design and in human factors, who could make useful
> suggestions.  Closing the discussion off to only developers excludes
> them.  Also, this feels a little bit like the argument apocryphally
> made at the end of the 19th century, that soon the patent office
> would have to close "because everything has been invented". ;-)
> Lateral thinking developed partly because sometimes being outside
> the problem gives you a perspective that those inside it don't have.
> 
>> So, why isn't setup.exe better?  It in't because we stubbornly don't
>> like to make changes.  It is because no one has the time or inclination
>> to put man months of effort into introducing new functionality.
>>
>> In projects which have a healthy number of developers, getting people to
>> do work is an issue of finding someone with an itch to scratch.  In
> 
> Principally, yes, but that isn't the whole story, see below.
>         [...]
>> Predictions of doom because suggestions aren't warmly received and vowed
>> to be acted upon miss several points.  The project doesn't succeed
>> because Anissa-Random-User decides to grace us with a suggestion.  It
>> succeeds because people find it useful.
> 
> They won't find it at all if her one unique suggestion is excluded
> by the process.  The real problem here, is how to keep the good suggestions
> while throwing out the rubbish.  It's not easy to solve.  Other
> GNU projects find Bugzilla useful, and I think that would be a step
> in a useful direction. [It may well only be "hill climbing", so we
> reach a local, rather than a global, optimum.]
>> A project really flourishes when there are enough developers to keep the
>> project running.  Cygwin has that just barely.  No amount of indignation
> 
> Yes.  So let's turn the problem around.  A new programmer turns up,
> with no particular thing they want to fix.  They just want to give
> something back to Cygwin.  This does happen, people get blocks of
> time they don't expect occasionally.  How will they find a list of
> problems worth tackling, against which they can match their skill
> set?  Were I in this position, I'd rather not have to trawl the mail
> archives.  That's the only mechanism suggested at
> <http://cygwin.com/contrib.html>.
> 
> Would you agree that if what is wanted is more development effort,
> then it should be made as easy as possible for developers to get
> started?
> 
> Would you accept patches to the contrib page that suggested the use
> of the existing bugzilla as a resource?  If so, then I'd like to 
> add a table of contents and re-order things a bit as well.
> 
>> is going to change that or convince a small team of busy developers to
>> do your bidding.

We already have the setup bugzilla in operation.
I am responsible for incoming tickets, most of them are spam, and 
trigger the developers if there's some update.

It's additional work and in most of the cases not needed, but in some 
cases it might be useful.

The current -p patch is at
http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=6688

The name selection filter suggestion not yet.

And it would be good if the setup.exe suggestion/reports would be posted 
to the right list, which is cygwin-apps, not cygwin!
I rather tend to ignore it here.
-- 
Reini Urban
http://phpwiki.org/  http://murbreak.at/

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Hugh Sasse]

On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Reini Urban wrote:

> Hugh Sasse schrieb:
> > On Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Christopher Faylor wrote:
        [...]
> > set?  Were I in this position, I'd rather not have to trawl the mail
> > archives.  That's the only mechanism suggested at
> > <http://cygwin.com/contrib.html>.
        [...]
> > Would you accept patches to the contrib page that suggested the use
> > of the existing bugzilla as a resource?  If so, then I'd like to add a table
> > of contents and re-order things a bit as well.
> > 
> > > is going to change that or convince a small team of busy developers to
> > > do your bidding.
> 
> We already have the setup bugzilla in operation.
> I am responsible for incoming tickets, most of them are spam, and trigger the
> developers if there's some update.
> 
> It's additional work and in most of the cases not needed, but in some cases it
> might be useful.

So would you prefer that I NOT suggest a patch to 
    <http://cygwin.com/contrib.html>.
to draw people's attention to the existing Bugzilla?

Else, if you'd like a patch, to whom should I send it?
> 
> The current -p patch is at
> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=6688
> 
> The name selection filter suggestion not yet.
> 
> And it would be good if the setup.exe suggestion/reports would be posted to
> the right list, which is cygwin-apps, not cygwin!

I could try and work something in to a patch for contrib.html
about that, if it is desired.

> I rather tend to ignore it here.

Understandably.
        Thank you
        Hugh
        

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Reini Urban]

Hugh Sasse schrieb:
> On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Reini Urban wrote:
> 
>> Hugh Sasse schrieb:
>>> On Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>         [...]
>>> set?  Were I in this position, I'd rather not have to trawl the mail
>>> archives.  That's the only mechanism suggested at
>>> <http://cygwin.com/contrib.html>.
>         [...]
>>> Would you accept patches to the contrib page that suggested the use
>>> of the existing bugzilla as a resource?  If so, then I'd like to add a table
>>> of contents and re-order things a bit as well.
>>>
>>>> is going to change that or convince a small team of busy developers to
>>>> do your bidding.
>> We already have the setup bugzilla in operation.
>> I am responsible for incoming tickets, most of them are spam, and trigger the
>> developers if there's some update.
>>
>> It's additional work and in most of the cases not needed, but in some cases it
>> might be useful.
> 
> So would you prefer that I NOT suggest a patch to 
>     <http://cygwin.com/contrib.html>.
> to draw people's attention to the existing Bugzilla?

The bugzilla is just an internal tool for the developers.
We don't need additional attention there.
The proper proposal and discussion is via the cygwin-apps@ list.

Anecdote: perl5 and postgresql development still works only via 
discussion and patches to the mailinglists. There's no tracker
at all.

> Else, if you'd like a patch, to whom should I send it?

As explained in the contrib guideline. To cygwin-apps@ of course.

>> The current -p patch is at
>> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=6688
>>
>> The name selection filter suggestion not yet.
>>
>> And it would be good if the setup.exe suggestion/reports would be posted to
>> the right list, which is cygwin-apps, not cygwin!
> 
> I could try and work something in to a patch for contrib.html
> about that, if it is desired.
> 
>> I rather tend to ignore it here.

Followup set to -apps
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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Christopher Faylor]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 12:16:06PM +0100, Hugh Sasse wrote:
>So would you prefer that I NOT suggest a patch to 
>    <http://cygwin.com/contrib.html>.
>to draw people's attention to the existing Bugzilla?

The contrib.html page has nothing to do with setup.

If this information is important it should go on the setup web page.

cgf

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Hugh Sasse]

On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 12:16:06PM +0100, Hugh Sasse wrote:
> >So would you prefer that I NOT suggest a patch to 
> >    <http://cygwin.com/contrib.html>.
> >to draw people's attention to the existing Bugzilla?
> 
> The contrib.html page has nothing to do with setup.
> 
> If this information is important it should go on the setup web page.

Reini Urban doesn't want the bugzilla stuff on there, so I'm letting
the matter rest, because I don't have anything else practical to
contribute at the moment.  Thanks for the discussion, it's helped me
see things in a wider perspective.  I think some of the social
problems scale horribly with the whole internet, and there aren't
the tools to cope yet.

> 
> cgf
> 
        Thank you,
        Hugh

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[NightStrike]

On 6/20/08, Dave Korn <dave.korn@artimi.com> wrote:

<snip some unnecessary banter>

>  It's definitely a good suggestion, quite possibly a great suggestion.
>
>  However, having made it, it is now just going to sit there in the mail
> archive for ever and ever and not ever do anything all by itself.
>
>  I think the point that cgf is getting at is that there is no shortage of
> suggestions or good ideas or enhancement requests or wish lists nor any
> difficulty in coming up with new ones.  But without a bit of getting-it-done
> elbow grease, a suggestion is really very little use on its own.

Where's the source?  I've wanted this feature since my first attempt
to use cygwin.  I'll implement it.

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Re: setup.exe needs package name selection filter

[Christopher Faylor]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 10:46:35PM -0400, NightStrike wrote:
>On 6/20/08, Dave Korn <dave.korn@artimi.com> wrote:
>>It's definitely a good suggestion, quite possibly a great suggestion.
>>
>>However, having made it, it is now just going to sit there in the mail
>>archive for ever and ever and not ever do anything all by itself.
>>
>>I think the point that cgf is getting at is that there is no shortage
>>of suggestions or good ideas or enhancement requests or wish lists nor
>>any difficulty in coming up with new ones.  But without a bit of
>>getting-it-done elbow grease, a suggestion is really very little use on
>>its own.
>
>Where's the source?  I've wanted this feature since my first attempt to
>use cygwin.  I'll implement it.

Check out the setup development web page here:

http://sourceware.org//cygwin-apps/setup.html

It's not completely up to date but the information about source code is
accurate.

cgf

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