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<blockquote type="cite">efforts that have already demonstrated
<div>community interest amoung users and contributors. I think </div>
<div>OSGeo4W has done both. <br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
+1<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>I must admit I'm not absolutely certain what the best way
is</div>
<div>to move OSGeo4W forward. Given the right person interested</div>
<div>in working on the project full time (or a substantial part
time)</div>
<div>at a "scrappy" price, I'd push for funding but I'm not sure
that</div>
<div>such a person exists. <br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
For myself, the limiter on participation is mostly available time.
My work priorities make osgeo4w a very distant poor cousin, and at
home family life consumes most everything. Funding would not
change this. (Unless of course Osgeo4w <i>was </i>my job! A
delightful prospect which I would embrace fully and gladly,
however there even if such a thing were available there are many
others much more qualified than I. So for the foreseeable future
it's status quo for me.)<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">My original point to the board was that I
hesitate to fire money at OSGeo4W as long as we are having
trouble building a vision of how to proceed with it. <br>
</blockquote>
+1 <br>
<br>
Without a clear idea of what we might be done with an influx of
resources the most likely result would be a bigger and more
exaggerated version of what we have now.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Certainly my view of Debian-like packaging
has not got universal acclaim, nor has the current approach of
haphazard hand building of packages always worked out well.</blockquote>
<br>
Some of the packaging woes could be solved, or at least eased, if
the many and growing python addons leveraged the standard
installers, as decribed in
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/ExternalPythonPackages">http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/ExternalPythonPackages</a>. I
believe that issues like dll-hell and incompatible compiler
configurations which have been causing trouble with QGIS and
friends in the last couple of years are side-stepped with python.
(I'm not certain of this though, the idea needs more testing.)<br>
<br>
For the non-python packages I'm very much in favour of a
debian-like package system (and wish there was one for all of
Windows).<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">we could probably make it more reliable if
we don't let the users to create their packages by hand. ... a
build environment (a dedicated server) to provide the builds and
the users should just author their build scripts which would
check out the sources and compile it regularly</blockquote>
<br>
I think this would go a long way to strengthening o4w, especially
if the build server/environment also built and tested the install
packages. Often it takes me twice as much time and headscratching
to verify the packaging than it does to construct it in the first
place.<br>
<br>
best,<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">matt wilkie
--------------------------------------------
Geomatics Analyst
Information Management and Technology
Yukon Department of Environment
10 Burns Road * Whitehorse, Yukon * Y1A 4Y9
867-667-8133 Tel * 867-393-7003 Fax
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://environmentyukon.gov.yk.ca/geomatics/">http://environmentyukon.gov.yk.ca/geomatics/</a>
-------------------------------------------- </pre>
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