June 16, 2009
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> So these votes seem to reflect a prior dislike to anything D and the immediate negative voting of anything related to it.

Eh, my relatives are at it again!
June 16, 2009
On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:42:31 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

> Robert Fraser wrote:
>> Tim Matthews wrote:
>>> Anders F Björklund wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> "Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries complete the language's offering quite spectacularly. The mature library DWT is a direct port of Java's SWT. A newer development is that the immensely popular Qt Software windowing library has recently released a D binding (in alpha as of this writing)."
>>>>
>>>> In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and wxD ?
>>>>
>>>> --anders
>>>
>>> About the gui toolkits: Never mind the fact that GTKD has been working stable for a long time unlike the QT port. Best to include both to keep wars at bay in my opinion like kde vs gnome.
>> 
>> You might want to toss in DFL, too. It doesn't compile on the latest anything without (a little) work, but it's a stable GUI library with a graphical designer that was designed from the ground up with D in mind.
> 
> This is excellent information, you may want to post it to reddit too. Speaking of reddit, I noticed there are forty-something negative votes but only one negative comment. From direct experience (sigh) I know that people who think an article sucks usually are also very inclined to voice their opinion (even more so than people who think an article was good!) There must be a study in behavioral psych somewhere. So these votes seem to reflect a prior dislike to anything D and the immediate negative voting of anything related to it. I wonder how such this could be addressed.
> 
> 
> Andrei

There is always a portion of down votes for every headline. That amount
is normal.
Down voting often comes from "I don't use that language and I'am
satisfied", gut feeling and the age of the last coffee.
I would say it's the same headwind for most language related topics on
reddit.

Anyway, great article! Thanks.
June 16, 2009
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
...
> Speaking of reddit, I noticed there are forty-something negative votes but only one negative comment. From direct experience (sigh) I know that people who think an article sucks usually are also very inclined to voice their opinion (even more so than people who think an article was good!) There must be a study in behavioral psych somewhere. So these votes seem to reflect a prior dislike to anything D and the immediate negative voting of anything related to it. I wonder how such this could be addressed.
> 
> 
> Andrei.

Somebody at work put up a poster, I believe it was from Red Hat linux, with a famous Gandhi quote: "first they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win..."

Probably normal part of the process, I think it's best to avoid being defensive and continue business as usual :)

I *really* liked your article, it's nice to read such an well written piece with unreserved enthousiasm and passion about D.








June 16, 2009
Reply to Walter,

Someone in there started a gripe about installers (they doesn't want to have to edit their path). Would you have any objections to (in addition to the current .zip distro) having officially sanctioned .rpm/.deb/.msi distros? Once the infrastructure is in place to build any of them, the rest should be easy.


June 16, 2009
Reply to Benjamin,

> Reply to Walter,
> 
> Someone in there started a gripe about installers (they doesn't want
> to have to edit their path). Would you have any objections to (in
> addition to the current .zip distro) having officially sanctioned
> .rpm/.deb/.msi distros? Once the infrastructure is in place to build
> any of them, the rest should be easy.
> 

p.s. I'm thinking of a setup where someone other than Walter maintains them.


June 16, 2009
BCS wrote:
> Someone in there started a gripe about installers (they doesn't want to have to edit their path). Would you have any objections to (in addition to the current .zip distro) having officially sanctioned .rpm/.deb/.msi distros? Once the infrastructure is in place to build any of them, the rest should be easy.

There is one for Ubuntu, but I'm having a bit of trouble making it work right.

But I actually agree that having a one-click install would help D along.
June 16, 2009
On Tue, 16 Jun 2009, BCS wrote:

> Reply to Benjamin,
> 
> > Reply to Walter,
> > 
> > Someone in there started a gripe about installers (they doesn't want to have to edit their path). Would you have any objections to (in addition to the current .zip distro) having officially sanctioned .rpm/.deb/.msi distros? Once the infrastructure is in place to build any of them, the rest should be easy.
> > 
> 
> p.s. I'm thinking of a setup where someone other than Walter maintains them.

From a long term maintainability standpoint, if someone wants to produce an installer that's likely to have longevity, it should operate on the underlying .zip file.  Take the zip and open it, make whatever (hopefully damned few) changes necessary, and kick the os as needed.

Having to re-build the installer for every release is what has caused essentially every installer attempt to die a horrible lingering death.

My 2 cents,
Brad

June 16, 2009
BCS wrote:
> Reply to Benjamin,
> 
>> Reply to Walter,
>>
>> Someone in there started a gripe about installers (they doesn't want
>> to have to edit their path). Would you have any objections to (in
>> addition to the current .zip distro) having officially sanctioned
>> .rpm/.deb/.msi distros? Once the infrastructure is in place to build
>> any of them, the rest should be easy.
>>
> 
> p.s. I'm thinking of a setup where someone other than Walter maintains them.

I think that's a terrific idea. It's unlikely that Walter would dislike that, but let's hear from him.

People complaining about the lack of a modern simple installer do have a point. An installer is like the first impression, and therefore it's more important than most long-time users would think.

Cristi Vlasceanu has contributed a .deb packager for D, see http://www.dsource.org/projects/phobos/browser/trunk/rpmsrc. I am more than a bit disappointed that to this day Walter has failed to integrate that work in his build process. I am disappointed exactly because I know how important the installer is, something that Walter seems to be blindsided to (like most of us he empathizes with needs that he has too, but he seldom needs to install the compiler and knows exactly what to do, and subliminally assumes anyone would be as content with the installation process).

So, it would be beyond great if there was a troika of Windows, Linux, and Mac installers. It could actually be entirely automated - a cron job could poll ftp.digitalmars.com for new versions and create the installer as soon as a new version is posted there.


Andrei
June 16, 2009
Brad Roberts wrote:

>> p.s. I'm thinking of a setup where someone other than Walter maintains them.
> 
> From a long term maintainability standpoint, if someone wants to produce an installer that's likely to have longevity, it should operate on the underlying .zip file.  Take the zip and open it, make whatever (hopefully damned few) changes necessary, and kick the os as needed.

I never got around to scripting the file manifest, but beyond diffing
the list of files that was pretty much the installer solution suggested.

The script is still available, if wanted...
http://www.algonet.se/~afb/d/dmd-setup.html

The main advantage over the raw .zip file was that it saved the sc.ini
and that it automatically set up the PATH, and also upgrades/uninstall.

> Having to re-build the installer for every release is what has caused essentially every installer attempt to die a horrible lingering death.

There was also the slight problem of not being able to share the result.

The installers for GDC seems to have survived the boredom of rebuilding.

--anders
June 16, 2009
Hello Walter,

> BCS wrote:
> 
>> Someone in there started a gripe about installers (they doesn't want
>> to have to edit their path). Would you have any objections to (in
>> addition to the current .zip distro) having officially sanctioned
>> .rpm/.deb/.msi distros? Once the infrastructure is in place to build
>> any of them, the rest should be easy.
>> 
> There is one for Ubuntu, but I'm having a bit of trouble making it
> work right.

<joke>IMHO: "That's Not Your Job!!"</joke> 

Check it into dsource and ask for people to adopt it.