Soliciting Opinions on xB Browser "How To Build" doc

[Arrakis]

Jacob,

  It is a little out of the way to take a win32 program and put the
build environment in something that isn't convenient for the end-user
who would be doing the build and verification process. So changing
operating systems or requiring cygwin installation isn't conducive. I'll
see if we can keep it win32. But if we had to, we could probably build
in in nix.

And you're right about the default file issue. Just a method of
preference but it would be nice if our distro hash was the same as our
build hash.

Steve


Jacob Appelbaum wrote:
> Arrakis wrote:
>> Jacob,
>>
>> This might be able to work, assuming we figure out if there are any
>> dependencies for win32 Make.
>>
>> Actually, I could probably even have Make curl, verify, and unpack the
>> latest Tor, Firefox, etc.
>>
>> Still doesn't solve all the GUI settings issues, but I guess it is a
>> general step in the right direction.
>>
> 
> Every successful software project I can think of uses an automated build
> process of sorts. If you make UI changes, they will eventually find
> their way into a file. How to modify these things isn't something you'd
> need to place into an automated build process. It's something you'd want
> to put into another document. Your default settings are the files left
> after tweaking things to fit your desires. Build your project in an
> automated way around files that are already created properly. What you
> ship is what needs to be automated. This allows someone to take your
> shipped binary and validate your claims.
> 
> If you're using subversion, you can easily make a single subversion
> server that uses external subversion repositories. This means that you
> can have Tor and other projects automatically pulled for a specific
> given revision. It should result in something stable without having to
> specifically release any code from those projects. This is useful
> because it means that users would be getting the source of those
> projects from their main distribution points and not you.
> 
> Make is very useful though it might not fit your needs because of your
> desire to build the software on windows. However, it seems that you're
> using lots of software that depends on it for building anyway.
> 
> Have you considered trying to make this work with cygwin and automating
> everything in simple terms? Once you have something simple, you can
> build something more complex.
> 
> Regards,
> Jacob
>