[Phpmyadmin-devel] releasing 3.4.0

[Dieter Adriaenssens]

2011/5/9 Tyron Madlener <tyronx at gmail.com>:
> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Michal Čihař <michal at cihar.com> wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> Dne Mon, 9 May 2011 11:26:40 +0200
>> Tyron Madlener <tyronx at gmail.com> napsal(a):
>>
>>> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 10:28 AM, Michal Čihař <michal at cihar.com> wrote:
>>> > Hi
>>> >
>>> > Dne Fri, 06 May 2011 06:25:42 -0400
>>> > Marc Delisle <marc at infomarc.info> napsal(a):
>>> >
>>> >> I suggest to release 3.4.0 this week-end, in order to start working on
>>> >> 3.4.1.
>>> >
>>> > I'm fine with releasing at any point (though the weekend you suggested
>>> > is over). Preferably ping me short before release so that I can merge
>>> > any last minute translations before.
>>> >
>>> > PS: We now have 15 complete translations, Japanese being the latest
>>> > addition.
>>>
>>> Question. Is your release procedure an automatic process or do you
>>> upload the files on sourceforge by hand?
>>
>> It's automated, see http://wiki.phpmyadmin.net/pma/Releasing
>>
>>> And secondly, why offer so
>>> many archive formats? I find having so many formats is a bit
>>> overwhelming for the average downloader.
>>
>> Because the formats were requested. On main page only zip and tar.gz
>> are offered, as these are pretty much standard.
>>
>>> My random idea of the day would be: Remove .bz2 and .xz (wow, never
>>> heard of that one before)
>>
>> The .xz is new LZMA based compression, which is getting very popular on
>> Linux, so no, we're not going to remove this one (and as you can see
>> it offers best compression rates). bz2 might be eventually dropped, but
>> too much people download it to do it right now.
>
> Looking at the numbers, for version 3.3.10 only 0.38% of the all
> languages package are being downloaded in the format .xz and 0.82% for
> the english version. It doesn't seem to be very popular at the moment.
>
>>
>>> and instead put a <select>-List on the
>>> downloads page listing all downloadable languages that forward you to
>>> the download link of pma with only that particular language included.
>>> That shouldn't be so much work if the sf.net file upload is automatic,
>>> and adds quite some convenience to the users.
>>
>> Adding more language kits could be indeed useful, but I'd rather
>> consider providing separate download for language files instead of
>> creating all language variants with all compressions.
>
> Isn't it more convenient for users to have the software available in
> their favorite language rather than their favorite archive format?

It's a good idea to offer a localised download, but in practise it
would mean we have to create, provide and host a package for every
available language. It makes more sense to provide a package with all
languages and a selector in the PMA-interface to choose the language
(benefit of this system is that you can host PMA in every language
available and the users can choose which language they prefer).
Or a version with only one default language and the option to install
language files (but that option is not available). It would be a
better idea to implement this than creating an archive of the full
pma-code for every language.

> The only difference with the different archive formats is waiting a
> few seconds more or less for it to be downloaded.

Not everybody has broadband, so a few KiB or MiB less (because of
better compression, or less languages) can mean a few minutes (or
more) if you have a very slow internet connection (think modem, areas
outside Europe/US, ...)

Kind regards,

Dieter