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From: Jan Lehnardt <jan@apache.org>
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Subject: Binary Downloads
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 12:35:03 +0100
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To: dev@couchdb.apache.org
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Hi all,

I think we should start considering providing binary downloads for our =
users.

The whole topic is a bit of a mess (see below), so I'd propose to start =
small.

1. This first iteration are links from couchdb.apache.org that are =
clearly
   marked as "unofficial 3rd party binary downloads" that are not hosted =
on
   ASF infrastructure.

2. Start with popular platforms.

3. Use the build-couchdb* script to create a fully self-contained =
directory with
   CouchDB and all its dependencies in one place that can be rm -rf'd =
for
   uninstalling.

* https://github.com/iriscouch/build-couchdb


The above circumvents several things that I hope we can resolve later, =
but that
I don't consider blocking us from getting the above started.

A. Official ASF releases. Of course, ideally, we should provide official =
ASF
   binary releases, but I acknowledge that with a small community, we =
may have
   trouble getting votes and testing for all popular platforms together.

   The nice thing of the proposal above though is, that we can, at any =
time
   promote an unofficial build to an official one by voting on it and =
changing
   it's label on the downloads page.

B. There's many target platforms our users work with and we can't =
possibly try
   to service them all at once. We can grow this operation as we get =
volunteers
   to help out with each platform.

   The nice thing here is that we can help a significant portion of =
users with
   relatively little effort.

C. Using existing package managers. There are many advantages to use =
official
   package managers for system installation and they should in fact be =
the
   preferred way to set up a system, but they tend to be a little bit =
behind
   with current releases.

   I'd be super happy to also work with existing package managers to =
improve
   the situation there, but I consider this to be outside of the scope =
of this
   discussion.


What do you think?

Cheers
Jan
--=20