Hi,

Lance Birch wrote :
> "Warp" wrote :
>> Lance Birch wrote:
>>> POV-Ray is well-known for its multiple platform support.  The overhea
d involved
>>> in producing a compile for each platform that POV-Ray supports for ea
ch beta
>>> release would be extreme, and is unnecessary for the testing process.

>>   It's not just a question of compilation: Frontends need to be create
d
>> for each platform. Not a trivial task.
> 
> Definitely.  I'm simplifying things greatly - there is so much to do to
 create
> each platform's release.  I was just noting the time overhead involved 
for each
> revision of the beta if you were to create one for each platform... com
piling
> for each platform (as it is, there are three compiles; 32-bit/32-bit
> SSE2/64-bit), compressing the various platform compiles with their docu
mentation
> into separate archives, updating the website with the multiple platform
 compiles
> and no doubt writing notes for each, and so on.  It would probably take
 5 times
> as long just to organise the compiles for the revisions and get them on
 the
> website, let alone the actual development involved.  One release is com
plex
> enough, and for the purposes of testing and debugging the new internals
 one
> platform is all that is required (and choosing the platform with the la
rgest
> beta tester user base is common sense).
> 
> People seem to have forgotten this is a beta.

I understand that a platform must be chosen to propose a beta version.
Otherwise it may be rather difficult to manage releases ... But why
is Windows chosen, knowing that it is the only OS that is non Unix ?

I can understand that there's much more beta testers under Windows,
because this system has a commercial dominant position. But this system
is also non compatible with every others !

If another system had been chosen, it would have been the best way to
port to others, and to have a representative implementation. You know
that POSIX threads are common to really a great amount of systems, if
it was the point ... Computing farms are running Unix systems ...

Windows is the worst choice to experiment a beta version. I always
personally ported POV starting from Linux sources anyway.

That's why I'm speaking of the way to "promote" Windows, which
sounds me to be the worst choice.

Regards,


Author of Eureka 2.12 (2D Graph Describer, 3D Modeller)
http://eureka.atari.org

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