[GRASS-dev] WinGRASS-6.3.0RC5 Self Installer

[Glynn Clements]

marco.pasetti at alice.it wrote:

> >Again, I agree with Glynn: if there is a problem let's try to fix it and
> not circumvent it. Your great installer will help a lot in getting
> people to install and test GRASS on windows, but if we already force
> such "solutions" on them, they will not be able to correctly detect the
> problem. Is there a way of just making the installer print a warning,
> instead of breaking off the installation procedure.
>  
> I decided to force a "working installation" for the following
> reason: the aim of all this work is, obviously, to spread GRASS as
> most as possible, because there are a lot of Windows users out
> there... so, to convince them to use GRASS, we need to be sure that
> it will definetely work on their machines, because Windows users are
> not used to *test* software and report bugs... they just use it, and
> when it doesn't work (for many reasons, also because they didn't
> followed installation warnings, and they're used to) they just say:
> "I told you! opensource softwares are good only for listen music or
> let kids chat with friends! if you need it for your job, you must
> buy a commercial fully working release!"

You seem to be overlooking one major point: WinGRASS is currently at
an *alpha* stage. Anyone who isn't willing to tolerate some bugs and
rough edges is going to be unhappy with it.

Right now, we need more "testers" for Windows. We don't need more
"users".

In fact, I'm quite worried that the main consequence of an easy-to-use
installer could be a large number of useless bug reports which don't
provide any useful information and just end up distracting (and
possibly de-motivating) the developers who are working on the Windows
version.

Anyone who wants a robust version of GRASS for Windows should be using
the Cygwin version.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>