My experiences last night


I've been doing production work in D for some six months now. Therefore I have been a bit reluctant to actually download the latest versions for testing, we've settled on 0.166 on Linux, and want to stay with it for some time past D 1.0.

Yesterday I couldn't resist, so I installed .174 on my w2k laptop -- and I was in for a major jolt:

Idly browsing dmd/bin I found that one of the exes actually had an icon. So I double-clicked it, and guess what, a simple wysiwyg GUI editor pops up! Wow, now we can make simple GUI apps right out of the box! And I found a small and nice text editor already configured for D there, too!

How come I've missed the buzz? Well, I guess D development is really putting on an exponential speed. Hoy contenders, resistance is futile!

Some research this morning revealed the day-after: I must have downloaded DFL in the spring and forgotten to erase the dm and dmd hierarchies before unzipping. Oh well, it's the small things, like always.


Some observations

While I actually believed I was using this "shrink-wrap-DMD", I had several different feelings about it:

 - wow, D is leaping forward -- where will we be in six months?!!
 - unfair to only provide GUI stuff for Windows
 - later it felt ok, since most D users are on Windows anyway
 - Walter's really out to impress the crap out of folks

After my bitter fall to ground, I felt:

 - why not?
 - some freebies in there make it feel polished, and "bigger"
 - ok, it's not Eclipse, but it could be touted as "a largish example"
 - OTOH, it must be awkward for Digital Mars:
    - quality issues
    - rights issues
    - the hassle, maintenance, support...
    - uncertainty about continued support from the app authors
    - upgrades syncing, especially waiting for the apps to catch up!
    - fighting with folks about who's stuff to include


Things learned

Obviously Walter can't be burdened with all this. So, what's left?
IMHO, we could re-examine the idea about there being "D distros".

We could have a few distros, each trying to be more user friendly, more outa-the-zip usable, and later distros for specific things, like games development, office stuff development, systems stuff, etc. If Linux seems to prosper with it, then I see no reason why D couldn't.

The DMD license could deny charging for such distros. At the same time the text would recommend contacting DM, "for very reasonable deals" on for-profit distribution, including book-sleeve CDs.

This way Walter could concentrate on exactly what he's doing right now, and what he's better at than anybody else: rocketing D to places where no language has gone!

I like this idea, not only because the competition between distros will keep people trying to make the most user friendly DMD distribution, but also because its just plain fun.  We want people to get excited about using D , and not just because it can be more productive.

And like you said it removes some of the burden from Walter.  I can already think of a handful of distros that Id like to try!

Georg Wrede wrote:
> My experiences last night
> 

It's also a potentially large money maker for Digital Mars ( which for the community means continued D development! ) , look how well red-hat has done selling a free operating system.


Charlie wrote:
> 
> I like this idea, not only because the competition between distros will keep people trying to make the most user friendly DMD distribution, but also because its just plain fun.  We want people to get excited about using D , and not just because it can be more productive.
> 
> And like you said it removes some of the burden from Walter.  I can already think of a handful of distros that Id like to try!
> 
> Georg Wrede wrote:
>> My experiences last night
>>

Georg Wrede wrote:

> We could have a few distros, each trying to be more user friendly,
> more outa-the-zip usable, and later distros for specific things, like
> games development, office stuff development, systems stuff, etc. If
> Linux seems to prosper with it, then I see no reason why D couldn't.

Linux is Free Software under the GPL, though ? Then again, so is GDC...
I think that a D "distro" is a great idea, but would prefer GNU GPL+FDL.

> The DMD license could deny charging for such distros. At the same time the text would recommend contacting DM, "for very reasonable deals" on for-profit distribution, including book-sleeve CDs.

AFAIK, the DM license forbids all re-distribution of the DMD software ?
So if I made a friendly installer for DMC/DMD, I couldn't distribute it.

--anders

DSSS would make a good distro for dmd/build. May not be feasible now, but some day.

Georg Wrede wrote:
> My experiences last night
> 
> 
> I've been doing production work in D for some six months now. Therefore I have been a bit reluctant to actually download the latest versions for testing, we've settled on 0.166 on Linux, and want to stay with it for some time past D 1.0.
> 
> Yesterday I couldn't resist, so I installed .174 on my w2k laptop -- and I was in for a major jolt:
> 
> Idly browsing dmd/bin I found that one of the exes actually had an icon. So I double-clicked it, and guess what, a simple wysiwyg GUI editor pops up! Wow, now we can make simple GUI apps right out of the box! And I found a small and nice text editor already configured for D there, too!
> 
> How come I've missed the buzz? Well, I guess D development is really putting on an exponential speed. Hoy contenders, resistance is futile!
> 
> Some research this morning revealed the day-after: I must have
> downloaded DFL in the spring and forgotten to erase the dm and dmd
> hierarchies before unzipping. Oh well, it's the small things, like always.
> 
> 
> Some observations
> 
> While I actually believed I was using this "shrink-wrap-DMD", I had several different feelings about it:
> 
>  - wow, D is leaping forward -- where will we be in six months?!!
>  - unfair to only provide GUI stuff for Windows
>  - later it felt ok, since most D users are on Windows anyway
>  - Walter's really out to impress the crap out of folks
> 
> After my bitter fall to ground, I felt:
> 
>  - why not?
>  - some freebies in there make it feel polished, and "bigger"
>  - ok, it's not Eclipse, but it could be touted as "a largish example"
>  - OTOH, it must be awkward for Digital Mars:
>     - quality issues
>     - rights issues
>     - the hassle, maintenance, support...
>     - uncertainty about continued support from the app authors
>     - upgrades syncing, especially waiting for the apps to catch up!
>     - fighting with folks about who's stuff to include
> 
> 
> Things learned
> 
> Obviously Walter can't be burdened with all this. So, what's left? IMHO, we could re-examine the idea about there being "D distros".
> 
> We could have a few distros, each trying to be more user friendly, more outa-the-zip usable, and later distros for specific things, like games development, office stuff development, systems stuff, etc. If Linux seems to prosper with it, then I see no reason why D couldn't.
> 
> The DMD license could deny charging for such distros. At the same time the text would recommend contacting DM, "for very reasonable deals" on for-profit distribution, including book-sleeve CDs.
> 
> This way Walter could concentrate on exactly what he's doing right now, and what he's better at than anybody else: rocketing D to places where no language has gone!

Though it creates fanciful bootstrapping issues, it's certainly possible. If I added a 'dmd' package, one could download just DSSS (with no compiler at all), and it would run a script (presumably not written in D :) ) which would download and install DMD.

In fact, I've already done this for GDC (though it's mostly only useful for upgrading, as its script /is/ written in D)

 - Gregor Richards

Jesse Phillips wrote:
> DSSS would make a good distro for dmd/build. May not be feasible now,
> but some day.
> 
> Georg Wrede wrote:
> 
>>My experiences last night
>>
>>
>>I've been doing production work in D for some six months now. Therefore
>>I have been a bit reluctant to actually download the latest versions for
>>testing, we've settled on 0.166 on Linux, and want to stay with it for
>>some time past D 1.0.
>>
>>Yesterday I couldn't resist, so I installed .174 on my w2k laptop -- and
>>I was in for a major jolt:
>>
>>Idly browsing dmd/bin I found that one of the exes actually had an icon.
>>So I double-clicked it, and guess what, a simple wysiwyg GUI editor pops
>>up! Wow, now we can make simple GUI apps right out of the box! And I
>>found a small and nice text editor already configured for D there, too!
>>
>>How come I've missed the buzz? Well, I guess D development is really
>>putting on an exponential speed. Hoy contenders, resistance is futile!
>>
>>Some research this morning revealed the day-after: I must have
>>downloaded DFL in the spring and forgotten to erase the dm and dmd
>>hierarchies before unzipping. Oh well, it's the small things, like always.
>>
>>
>>Some observations
>>
>>While I actually believed I was using this "shrink-wrap-DMD", I had
>>several different feelings about it:
>>
>> - wow, D is leaping forward -- where will we be in six months?!!
>> - unfair to only provide GUI stuff for Windows
>> - later it felt ok, since most D users are on Windows anyway
>> - Walter's really out to impress the crap out of folks
>>
>>After my bitter fall to ground, I felt:
>>
>> - why not?
>> - some freebies in there make it feel polished, and "bigger"
>> - ok, it's not Eclipse, but it could be touted as "a largish example"
>> - OTOH, it must be awkward for Digital Mars:
>>    - quality issues
>>    - rights issues
>>    - the hassle, maintenance, support...
>>    - uncertainty about continued support from the app authors
>>    - upgrades syncing, especially waiting for the apps to catch up!
>>    - fighting with folks about who's stuff to include
>>
>>
>>Things learned
>>
>>Obviously Walter can't be burdened with all this. So, what's left?
>>IMHO, we could re-examine the idea about there being "D distros".
>>
>>We could have a few distros, each trying to be more user friendly, more
>>outa-the-zip usable, and later distros for specific things, like games
>>development, office stuff development, systems stuff, etc. If Linux
>>seems to prosper with it, then I see no reason why D couldn't.
>>
>>The DMD license could deny charging for such distros. At the same time
>>the text would recommend contacting DM, "for very reasonable deals" on
>>for-profit distribution, including book-sleeve CDs.
>>
>>This way Walter could concentrate on exactly what he's doing right now,
>>and what he's better at than anybody else: rocketing D to places where
>>no language has gone!

I've written a script for installing DMD on Linux. This could easily be adopted to either an executable file for Windows, or a batch script (though I think an executable file is less pain in the ass in this case.. :P).

Alex

Gregor Richards wrote:
> Though it creates fanciful bootstrapping issues, it's certainly possible. If I added a 'dmd' package, one could download just DSSS (with no compiler at all), and it would run a script (presumably not written in D :) ) which would download and install DMD.
> 
> In fact, I've already done this for GDC (though it's mostly only useful for upgrading, as its script /is/ written in D)
> 
>  - Gregor Richards
> 
> Jesse Phillips wrote:
>> DSSS would make a good distro for dmd/build. May not be feasible now,
>> but some day.
>>
>> Georg Wrede wrote:
>>
>>> My experiences last night
>>>
>>>
>>> I've been doing production work in D for some six months now. Therefore
>>> I have been a bit reluctant to actually download the latest versions for
>>> testing, we've settled on 0.166 on Linux, and want to stay with it for
>>> some time past D 1.0.
>>>
>>> Yesterday I couldn't resist, so I installed .174 on my w2k laptop -- and
>>> I was in for a major jolt:
>>>
>>> Idly browsing dmd/bin I found that one of the exes actually had an icon.
>>> So I double-clicked it, and guess what, a simple wysiwyg GUI editor pops
>>> up! Wow, now we can make simple GUI apps right out of the box! And I
>>> found a small and nice text editor already configured for D there, too!
>>>
>>> How come I've missed the buzz? Well, I guess D development is really
>>> putting on an exponential speed. Hoy contenders, resistance is futile!
>>>
>>> Some research this morning revealed the day-after: I must have
>>> downloaded DFL in the spring and forgotten to erase the dm and dmd
>>> hierarchies before unzipping. Oh well, it's the small things, like always.
>>>
>>>
>>> Some observations
>>>
>>> While I actually believed I was using this "shrink-wrap-DMD", I had
>>> several different feelings about it:
>>>
>>> - wow, D is leaping forward -- where will we be in six months?!!
>>> - unfair to only provide GUI stuff for Windows
>>> - later it felt ok, since most D users are on Windows anyway
>>> - Walter's really out to impress the crap out of folks
>>>
>>> After my bitter fall to ground, I felt:
>>>
>>> - why not?
>>> - some freebies in there make it feel polished, and "bigger"
>>> - ok, it's not Eclipse, but it could be touted as "a largish example"
>>> - OTOH, it must be awkward for Digital Mars:
>>>    - quality issues
>>>    - rights issues
>>>    - the hassle, maintenance, support...
>>>    - uncertainty about continued support from the app authors
>>>    - upgrades syncing, especially waiting for the apps to catch up!
>>>    - fighting with folks about who's stuff to include
>>>
>>>
>>> Things learned
>>>
>>> Obviously Walter can't be burdened with all this. So, what's left?
>>> IMHO, we could re-examine the idea about there being "D distros".
>>>
>>> We could have a few distros, each trying to be more user friendly, more
>>> outa-the-zip usable, and later distros for specific things, like games
>>> development, office stuff development, systems stuff, etc. If Linux
>>> seems to prosper with it, then I see no reason why D couldn't.
>>>
>>> The DMD license could deny charging for such distros. At the same time
>>> the text would recommend contacting DM, "for very reasonable deals" on
>>> for-profit distribution, including book-sleeve CDs.
>>>
>>> This way Walter could concentrate on exactly what he's doing right now,
>>> and what he's better at than anybody else: rocketing D to places where
>>> no language has gone!

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> AFAIK, the DM license forbids all re-distribution of the DMD software ?
> So if I made a friendly installer for DMC/DMD, I couldn't distribute it.

Well, that just means your installer can't contain DMC/DMD. It means mean you'd have to create an installer that just gets it from ftp.digitalmars.com every time someone needs it. (though this'll likely be slower than an all-in-one package :( )
But I'd guess an installer containing (up-to-date) GDC plus the popular libraries would likely be nice too.

It shouldn't even be too hard to hack something up using DSSS + a script or even GUI...
This, of course, assumes DSSS works the way I think it does, I haven't tried it yet.

Frits van Bommel wrote:
> It shouldn't even be too hard to hack something up using DSSS + a script or even GUI...
> This, of course, assumes DSSS works the way I think it does, I haven't tried it yet.

Of course, the next post I read is someone having already suggested this :).

While DSSS is a great product in the vein of cpan and its ilk and I don't want to diminish it's value, but for most unix flavors, there's native packaging mechanisms that are preferred by the masses.

Explicitly stated:
  for freebsd, ports is king
      debian, .deb's and the various front ends is where it's at
      redhat, .rpm and yum
      windows, uh... installshield?  I dunno.. not my playground
      etc...

My primary experience is with debian.  There there's wrappers around cpan to facilitate creation of .deb from a cpan package should it not happen to be already officially packaged up (an extreme rarity).  As a maintainer of more systems than I care to, I value the uniformity that using a single package management system brings.

So.. what would really go a long way, would be a way to easily create native package for various platforms and a repository to be populated. What would then work well would be for there to be a single 'starter' package for D development:  probably a dmd/gdc installer + a hook to register the native repository with the native install system (for debian this would be adding a line to the /etc/apt/sources.list file).

DSSS could then mutate to a system for building and producing the artifacts to go into the repository, maybe.

Anyway.. food for thought.

Later,
Brad

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Jesse Phillips wrote:

> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 10:37:53 -0800
> From: Jesse Phillips <Jesse.K.Phillips+Digitalmars@gmail.com>
> Reply-To: digitalmars.D <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com>
> To: digitalmars-d@puremagic.com
> Newsgroups: digitalmars.D
> Subject: Re: Last DMD made me truly breathless -- for the wrong reasons
> 
> DSSS would make a good distro for dmd/build. May not be feasible now, but some day.
> 
> Georg Wrede wrote:
> > My experiences last night
> > 
> > 
> > I've been doing production work in D for some six months now. Therefore I have been a bit reluctant to actually download the latest versions for testing, we've settled on 0.166 on Linux, and want to stay with it for some time past D 1.0.
> > 
> > Yesterday I couldn't resist, so I installed .174 on my w2k laptop -- and I was in for a major jolt:
> > 
> > Idly browsing dmd/bin I found that one of the exes actually had an icon. So I double-clicked it, and guess what, a simple wysiwyg GUI editor pops up! Wow, now we can make simple GUI apps right out of the box! And I found a small and nice text editor already configured for D there, too!
> > 
> > How come I've missed the buzz? Well, I guess D development is really putting on an exponential speed. Hoy contenders, resistance is futile!
> > 
> > Some research this morning revealed the day-after: I must have
> > downloaded DFL in the spring and forgotten to erase the dm and dmd
> > hierarchies before unzipping. Oh well, it's the small things, like always.
> > 
> > 
> > Some observations
> > 
> > While I actually believed I was using this "shrink-wrap-DMD", I had several different feelings about it:
> > 
> >  - wow, D is leaping forward -- where will we be in six months?!!
> >  - unfair to only provide GUI stuff for Windows
> >  - later it felt ok, since most D users are on Windows anyway
> >  - Walter's really out to impress the crap out of folks
> > 
> > After my bitter fall to ground, I felt:
> > 
> >  - why not?
> >  - some freebies in there make it feel polished, and "bigger"
> >  - ok, it's not Eclipse, but it could be touted as "a largish example"
> >  - OTOH, it must be awkward for Digital Mars:
> >     - quality issues
> >     - rights issues
> >     - the hassle, maintenance, support...
> >     - uncertainty about continued support from the app authors
> >     - upgrades syncing, especially waiting for the apps to catch up!
> >     - fighting with folks about who's stuff to include
> > 
> > 
> > Things learned
> > 
> > Obviously Walter can't be burdened with all this. So, what's left? IMHO, we could re-examine the idea about there being "D distros".
> > 
> > We could have a few distros, each trying to be more user friendly, more outa-the-zip usable, and later distros for specific things, like games development, office stuff development, systems stuff, etc. If Linux seems to prosper with it, then I see no reason why D couldn't.
> > 
> > The DMD license could deny charging for such distros. At the same time the text would recommend contacting DM, "for very reasonable deals" on for-profit distribution, including book-sleeve CDs.
> > 
> > This way Walter could concentrate on exactly what he's doing right now, and what he's better at than anybody else: rocketing D to places where no language has gone!
>