[haiku-development] Re: Build Factory
- From: Sikosis <sikosis@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:24:19 +1000
On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 1:29 PM, Ingo Weinhold <ingo_weinhold@xxxxxx> wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> trying to download the latest nightly build for reference I encountered a
> few issues:
>
> * First of all there are too many links to follow:
> "http://www.haiku-os.org/"; -> "Nightly builds": Here I would expect
> something I can click and download. Instead I'm presented with the
> categories "Raw HDD images" and "VMware images" and can to choose between
> "Haiku Build Factory: Latest nightly build" and "Haiku Files: Archive of
> nightly builds". The latter sounds like those are the "old" images, so I
> click the former. (I fixed the link, so it no longer refers to the "We have
> moved" page, but directly to the build factory main page.) Unfortunately
> the page doesn't seem to contain a directly link to anything I can download
> either. So I follow the "Haiku Files" link and then the "Raw images" link
> to finally get a list of downloadable files.
>
The Download Page on the Haiku-OS site will eventually be the place
where people will go to download the ISO of Haiku. At present, as
there is no ISO, the Download Page shows all the options that are
available for getting Haiku.
Perhaps an extra blurb is required at the top to make this clearer to
the public, what the options are and why there are there.
> * This page (http://haiku-files.org/raw/) has at least two flaws:
> - It doesn't explain what the difference between
> haiku-pre-alpha-r*-raw.zip and
> http://haiku-files.org/raw/haiku.image.r*.zip is.
Well to be honest, the haiku-pre-alpha is relatively new and came
about in the last 3 weeks. Assuming, our plans are to offer both the
vanilla and the development images, perhaps another blurb stating the
differences between these two is needed also.
> - The latest image can apparently still be in the process of being
> uploaded. I.e. downloading it will probably give me something broken.
Well -- that's pretty easy to spot -- the filesize is constantly
changing. Looking at the previous days filesize, also give you an idea
of how big it should be. Also, if you're worried about an image
currently being uploaded, you should check the status of the Build
Factory to see where it is at.
>
> IMHO this is a usability nightmare. I suggest the following changes:
>
> * "http://www.haiku-os.org/downloads"; should directly link to the latest
> downloadable files, with a short explanation which is which, and a link
> where to get the "archived" ones.
>
Well, before the Build Factory was forced off of haiku-os.org to
haiku-files.org -- there was a block showing exactly that.
That block how lives on the Development page, perhaps it should be
moved (or also added) to the Download page. In fact, I think it should
be on that Download page -- so I'll fix that now.
> * The page with the archived images should list the revisions (together
> with their corresponding date) as directories, each containing the images
> for that revision with either descriptive names or short descriptions.
> Obviously it should not refer to partially uploaded files -- a revision
> directory should only become available when all files have been uploaded
> completely.
Not sure how that's possible -- how do you know when a file has been
uploaded -- unless the server uploading tells the directory that it's
done -- that's what the Build Factory status does.
>
> * The build factory page: Could anyone be interested in the information
> presented there? The only reason to have a look at the logs would be, when
> the build failed, but then the split stdout and stderr logs are
> counter-productive. A simple link to the log would suffice.
So, the logs the factory produces are useless ? If so, that could save
a lot of time in the build process if I don't need to generate them.
> "http://haiku-files.org/factory/jamlog.zip"; is a zipped 180 MB
> concatenation of all build logs since March, BTW.
That I didn't know -- just goes to show how many people look at these
logs ... I wouldn't have thought this would be the case, as the log
files are deleted daily -- but when I get access to the machine
tonight, I'll confirm and fix if needed.
> The progress bar shows
> context-less info ("Stage 3 Complete" -- uh-huh...).
Stage 3 is when it's uploading ...
>Either drop the page completely or make it more geeky (i.e. add potentially
>useful info like the
> commit logs for the revisions between the builds, and useless but geeky
> info like build statistics (build time, number of objects/targets, number
> and total size of the files on the image, etc.)) and make it less
> prominently accessible (just via a "more info..." link on the download
> page).
If that's the sort of information you want the Factory to show, then
great, some feedback -- I'll work on adding a bunch of those features
in due course.
Cheers
Sikosis
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