[Xastir-dev] Releases on github vs. releases on SourceForge

[Tom Russo]

So, this issue came to mind just now in responding to David Ranch's pull
request.

When a release is bundled on sourceforge, we've (that is to say, Curt's) 
typically done a bootstrap on the code to get configure and all the 
Makefile.in files generated,  so that users who download release tarballs don't
need to run bootstrap.sh or even have any of the autotools installed.

Github doesn't work like this.  A release on github is just a tagged state
of the git repo, and when you ask to download it, it bundles up that SHA-1
into a tarball/zipfile/whatever.  You can't have it be a processed version
of the sources, like sourceforge does. 

If we keep pointing users at sourceforge for release tarballs, we can keep
the old process, but have to maintain the old sourceforge site for keeps.
If we switch to github for release downloads, we'll have to make all source
code users do a bootstrap after download, whether compiling off a stable
release tarball or the development head.

Thoughts?

I think that adding bootstrap.sh to the instructions for release tarballs
isn't that onerous, and might also lower the bar for folks to use the 
development branch versions, since the build process for the branch head
and the release tarball will be identical.  Then again, it may raise the bar 
for them to use Xastir at all.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
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