[Gtkradiant] possible changes in release strategy / QA - summary

[Timothee Besset]

Several things summing up what I've seen in the previous mails:

Hydra's post about a release strategy: That's more or less what we do
already, nothing really new. We provide packages with Q3+RTCW, or RTCW
only. We have full and updates. We can extend to have more variations. The
critical point here is that the release process is very tedious, no matter
how much you automate it. I also restrict the number packages to avoid
confusion as much as possible about what to get.

Releasing zips: NO WAY. The 1.2 install generates the .game files on the
fly from user choices, and they are crucial to editor startup. I can't
imagine how much people would think 'I'm too good for installers, I'm
gonna get the zip and do it myself', then they would screw it up and get
back to us. The other reason is that we HAVE to get users to click through
a license.

Doing something more dynamic (auto-update/auto-download of the components)
is not very realistic. Despite my effort, nobody has messed with the win32
installer stuff except me .. and I can understand that, it's a boring and
tricky thing to do. Gef has helped a lot on the Linux installer and he
knows what I'm talking about. As long as I am the only one playing with
the installer, I won't push for further changes on the system, it's good
enough for me.

Obviously we should push towards some better web integration. We can't
start changing the release strategy until we have some more web stuff to
support it. A few immediate things to do would be editor selection: ask
questions about what games etc., and get the guy directly to the file he
wants. And a command in GtkRadiant 'check for updates' that sends to the
appropriate place (an http url binded to a cgi script, with the
appropriate editor version, installed packages etc.)

We could go further and write a spyware module than warns when there's an
update, or sends editor news etc. but that's not something I will throw a
lot of ressources in myself.

TTimo