Thread overview
Should we distribute a Dutmite binary in the zipped package?
Oct 20, 2013
Andrej Mitrovic
Oct 21, 2013
Wyatt
Oct 21, 2013
Andrej Mitrovic
Oct 21, 2013
John Colvin
Oct 21, 2013
Andrej Mitrovic
Oct 21, 2013
Wyatt
Oct 21, 2013
inout
Re: Should we distribute a Dustmite binary in the zipped package?
Oct 22, 2013
Martin Nowak
October 20, 2013
It's a pretty useful tool after all (and it's strange how many people don't even know it exists, judging from IRC conversations). It's already in the tools repo.

The issue is filed as: http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=10332
October 21, 2013
On Sunday, 20 October 2013 at 12:16:14 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>
> ...it's strange how many people don't even know it exists...

No it isn't.

Look a this page:
http://dlang.org/download.html

Now, look at all the pages under "Compilers & Tools" here:
http://wiki.dlang.org/The_D_Programming_Language

How do you expect people to find out about tools if they're not even so much as mentioned in the places you'd go to find tools?  People don't know about things that aren't documented.  Full stop.

-Wyatt
October 21, 2013
On 10/21/13, Wyatt <wyatt.epp@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, 20 October 2013 at 12:16:14 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>>
>> ...it's strange how many people don't even know it exists...
>
> No it isn't.

What isn't? I'm just reporting on user experience here.

> Look a this page:
> http://dlang.org/download.html

Right, it would have to be added there as well.

> Now, look at all the pages under "Compilers & Tools" here: http://wiki.dlang.org/The_D_Programming_Language

It's listed here: http://wiki.dlang.org/Community:Open_Source_Projects

> People don't know about things that aren't documented.  Full stop.

Not really a full stop, Dustmite has been incorporated into our tools repository (https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/tools), which is also the home of RDMD.

Adding it to the zip, linking it on the website, and mentioning it in the changelog could give a boost to its usage, and it really is a super-useful tool for reducing regressions. There were over 97 regressions fixed in the latest release.
October 21, 2013
On Monday, 21 October 2013 at 08:17:49 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> On 10/21/13, Wyatt <wyatt.epp@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sunday, 20 October 2013 at 12:16:14 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>>>
>>> ...it's strange how many people don't even know it exists...
>>
>> No it isn't.
>
> What isn't? I'm just reporting on user experience here.

I think he meant it isn't strange.
October 21, 2013
On 10/21/13, John Colvin <john.loughran.colvin@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think he meant it isn't strange.

Ah. Well maybe the more proper word is "unfortunate". :)
October 21, 2013
On Monday, 21 October 2013 at 08:17:49 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> On 10/21/13, Wyatt <wyatt.epp@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sunday, 20 October 2013 at 12:16:14 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>>>
>>> ...it's strange how many people don't even know it exists...
>>
>> No it isn't.
>
> What isn't? I'm just reporting on user experience here.
>
John Colvin got it, but I'll confirm: It's not at all strange or unusual that an undocumented tool isn't well-known.

It doesn't matter that it's in the tools repository or tucked away on some non-obvious page of the wiki.  If people don't see it in the first two places we expect them to look, then it may as well not exist to a lot of them.

I agree it should be added to the release tarball, but even that won't necessarily improve its visibility.  How often do you look for new things with strange names added to /usr/bin alongside the binaries you're actually using?

So I'll go a little further: not only should it be on the tooling-related pages, it should also be mentioned and linked in any place where we talk about reporting bugs, including the homepage of the bug tracker.

-Wyatt
October 21, 2013
On Sunday, 20 October 2013 at 12:16:14 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> It's a pretty useful tool after all (and it's strange how many people
> don't even know it exists, judging from IRC conversations). It's
> already in the tools repo.
>
> The issue is filed as:
> http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=10332

I'm using D for many years, and this is the first time I'm hearing about this tool.
October 22, 2013
On 10/20/2013 02:16 PM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> It's a pretty useful tool after all (and it's strange how many people
> don't even know it exists, judging from IRC conversations). It's
> already in the tools repo.

I don't like the idea to ship even more binaries in a release
contending for the constrained resources we have.
Put a "How to report a bug" link on the main page that links to the wiki and improve DustMite's documentation.

http://wiki.dlang.org
https://github.com/CyberShadow/DustMite/wiki