Hi all,

   Chatting on IRC with a few devs, the following issues were 
(belatedly) raised regarding Windows support for couchdb - specifically, 
the lack of a couchdb 0.11 release for Windows.

* The test suite does not pass on Windows due to issues compacting and 
deleting databases and views.  There was a suggestion we can't have an 
"official" release where the tests fail.  While a fix for this is in the 
pipeline, it isn't in 0.11.  While this has been true since 0.10 and all 
throughout the earlier discussions about an official Windows release, it 
appears to now be a show-stopper.

* I was on 10 days vacation recently.  Even though the 0.11 release 
process took many weeks, I was in email contact for the entire time and 
I returned from vacation the same day the vote results were announced, 
it was felt that this was enough to cause Windows to be dropped from the 
0.11 voting procedure.  Given the delays already encountered in this 
release, I'm disappointed this position was taken, but cest-la-vie.

* The couchdb windows builds includes non ASF binaries - for example, 
binaries for erlang itself are included, and even though most are built 
locally as part of the release process, there was a concern about legal 
issues in providing such binaries.  IANAL and have no desire to play on 
one TV, so I have no capability of either assessing nor resolving this.

Jan asked me to send a note to the -dev list on these issues which I am 
dutifully doing.  I don't think there is anything I can personally do to 
help resolve any these issues, so I hope someone here can help to get a 
Windows installer back on track.  The last issue mentioned is of 
particular concern to me - if there are any legal issues around this, 
the same legal issues presumably apply to me personally, which implies 
it would be prudent for me to stop creating couchdb binary snapshots 
(and also to remove the old existing ones) until it is resolved.

Cheers,

Mark