3.6 Release Experience, Parrot Developer Summit, Roadmap Goals

[Kevin Polulak]

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 5:21 PM, Jonathan "Duke" Leto <jonathan at leto.net>wrote:

> If there are so few people on Windows wanting to do Parrot development,
> this
> should lead us to ask how important supporting Windows is.
>
>  Which platforms are most important? Because surely, there will be times
> when we
> have to choose between not getting anything released and releasing a
> feature
> that only works on a subset of our currently supported platforms.
>

Putting my personal feelings about proprietary software aside, I do still
think it's worth focusing on increasing our support for Windows. If we
really want Parrot to be seen as a suitable alternative to the JVM or CLR,
Windows support is *absolutely* necessary.

I will admit that I do fall into the "I want Parrot developers on Windows to
be somebody else" category. But I've realized that it's unrealistic to just
sit around hoping somebody will show up on #parrot someday saying "Hey, I
use Windows so let me help with that!".

As much as it pains me to say this, I will try to use Windows a little more
to send smoke reports and run tests and such. I can't promise that I'll be
able to fix any failed tests as I know nothing about the Windows API but I
will at least try to make some noise (through smolder) when things fail.
I've tried to do so in the past but was hit with incredible resistance and
just gave up on it. However, the only way for this to get better is to be a
part of the solution.

I will also continue to run tests and send smoke reports on BSD-like
systems. Just like with Windows, I've done so in the past but now that
issues of platform compatibly are being raised, I will make it a point to
try a little harder.

-- 
- Kevin Polulak (soh_cah_toa)
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