[Libusbx-devel] Keeping the 1.0.9rc3 tag

[Xiaofan Chen]

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 3:11 AM, Pete Batard <pete at akeo.ie> wrote:
> OK, I'll keep the tag in then.
>
> On 2012.03.24 00:29, Xiaofan Chen wrote:
>> And I do not see a problem with public github. My view is that
>> we should announce the project and release asap on the libusb
>> mailing list to show people that they have an alternative.
>
> I'd rather have a wiki and libusbx.org pointing to it before we do that
> (and with some substance to the wiki). Going public with half the stuff
> missing is not going to encourage people to use libusbx, and was the
> reason why I didn't want to officialize things before the 1.0.10 release.

Wiki and libusbx.org are fine.

With regard to 1.0.9 release, I think the mainline git plus a few
minor things (e.g.: xusb, Hans' patches, etc) should be fine.

One relatively simple thing to do with 1.0.10 is to bring HID
back to the Windows backend and call it 1.0.10 along with
further bug fix for Mac OS X and Linux.

> Currently, I doubt we'll have much to present by the 1.0.9 release.
> Having a release tarball is fine an all, but it's only *one part* of
> what we need to do to be seen as a viable alternative to libusb. We'll
> also need to duplicate doxygen, set up a bug report system (trac?
> something else?) and finalize some other stuff. And with the target for
> the 1.0.9 tarball release being in about a week, I'm not currently
> counting on having all of that sorted out (realistically, it'll take us
> more than a week to get there). Thus, until we do, I'd refrain from
> announcing that we're going to replace anything, because it'll be
> exceedingly apparent that we aren't in a position to actually do so.

Duplicate Doxygen is not that difficult, right? Just generate
it and upload it to Sourceforge. Daniel does it for libusb.
And Travis has done it for libusbK.
http://libusbk.sourceforge.net/UsbK3/index.html

With the above documentation, Travis and I think Wiki
are not that necessary. But new Sourceforge has Wiki
as well so libusbK has a placeholder here.
http://sourceforge.net/p/libusbk/wiki/Home/

Bug report system: The new Sourceforge interface has it.
http://sourceforge.net/p/libusbk/tickets/

> Or, to put it more simply - there's nothing worse or that will
> discourage people from using your project, when you are competing
> against a mature well established one, than announcing things
> prematurely. The first thing people will do is of course compare your
> offering with what they can have on the other side, and if you offer
> less features, even if you bridge the gap later on, you'll lose the
> people who checked your project a first time, and decided it was too
> unpolished/unfinished to use.
>
> First impressions are critical. Until we've sorted a bit more than a
> 1.0.9 tarball release, I don't think we're anywhere near to make a good
> first impression.

First impressions are critical. But you can give good impressions
by providing reasons why you think you are better.

In the case of libusbx versus libusb, we can provide good reasons.
1) We will have releases, 1.0.9 done. 1.0.10 is on the pipe line, etc.
2) We can provide roadmaps, Hotplug, libusb0.sys/libusbk.sys
integration, etc

All in all, I am okay with not to officialize things before the
1.0.10 release. But currently my idea of 1.0.10 release is
quite simple and will not take that long if we need to just
bring back HID.


-- 
Xiaofan