[Gpg4win-devel] claws extensions

[Marcus Brinkmann]

Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> On Mittwoch, 15. Oktober 2008, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
>>> I am not worried about size, I am worried about complexity.
>> Well, in this case that's a false alarm.  The packaging of claws is
>> the same as that of other source packages.
>>
>> <technical stuff>
> 
> You are missing the complexity point of the application itself.

Gpg4win is a mini-distribution.  A distribution that is worried about the
complexity of the applications it includes is an empty distribution.

As a distribution, quality assurance is an important factor, and of course
included software should be considered by many aspects, including its complexity
and maintainability.  In this respect, claws has been consistently improving.

As the claws package we include now is the best one ever, and in fact the first
one that supports important features like IMAP properly, I don't quite
understand what prompted you to raise your concerns at this time.  The inclusion
of a couple of plugins is not going to raise the complexity for us by much.

> It is also sad to see that NSIS brings so many drawbacks. Using a meta
> language also does not strike right with me, so I would go the way
> of focussing more towards .msi and WiX before investing more in NSIS.

I would suggest to evaluate both options (and others) before focussing.  You
have now heard about 2 or 3 things that MSI does better than NSIS by default,
but that's hardly a complete picture.

There are also other factors to consider, for example which solution is more
accessible to other free software hackers, and which has more broader impact.
Replacing one island solution by another is also not buying us much considering
the more general problem of shared components (which MSI doesn't support very
well either).  If we have the opportunity to revise the packaging system and at
the same time kick-start a free software solution for all free software projects
ported to Windows, that might be great, although surely difficult.

Thanks,
Marcus