I have just watched a fascinating video entitled “Why Desktop Linux Sucks” by Bryan Lunduke (http://anotherubuntu.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-desktop-linux-sucks.html). Desktop Linux works really well for me but Bryan makes a lot of important points. I certainly agree that packaging is a big problem. The approach I have taken for Linux installation with the SOFA Statistics project is to only release a deb package aimed at Ubuntu (http://www.sofastatistics.com/downloads.php). I am already spending a lot of time packaging as it is and would like to spend more time developing new features.
Archive for the ‘developers’ Category
Ubuntu packages the only Linux option
Thursday, May 28th, 2009SOFA Statistics working under Karmic already
Thursday, May 28th, 2009The SOFA 0.7.1 deb package installed successfully under Karmic alpha 1 so it has now been tested in Jaunty and Karmic. Intrepid should work but feedback would be welcome on this.
Resolving Windows installation glitches
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009If you had problems installing the Windows version of SOFA 0.6.8, try 0.7.0 (http://www.sofastatistics.com/misc/sofa-0.7.0_python-2.5.zip). It resolves the main issues with that installation package. Version 0.7.0 also resolves some other issues within SOFA and represents the first of the 0.7 series – the goal of which is to enable importing of spreadsheets and other, non-SQL database type data.
The Windows comtypes package relied upon by SOFA 0.6.8 proved to be faulty. The 0.7.0 version of SOFA Statistics, which has just been released, uses an older version of comtypes (0.5.2) which is known to work. A version of comtypes 0.6.0 for python 2.5 is apparently forthcoming.
There is still a delay when using SOFA’s table making functionality for the first time while comtypes generates some data it needs. NB this is a one-off delay which doesn’t affect anything else. Ideally, SOFA will handle this process better in a forthcoming release.
Launchpad puts the Open into Open Source
Friday, May 22nd, 2009I have made some more revisions of SOFA Statistics (bugs fixed, mainly regressions after refactoring). Launchpad makes it easy to see every difference between the different versions. http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~launchpad-p-s/sofastatistics/main/revision/5 Truly, nothing is hidden which shall not be revealed! These are very powerful tools, all made available through the power of open source.
Using Bazaar on Launchpad
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009Just started using Bazaar on Launchpad to provide distributed version control for SOFA Statistics. Very nice. And commands like:
bzr commit
bzr push -m “description in here”
are very easy to remember.
Also adding lots of public and internal process documentation. Soon it will be back to adding new features.