Re: Soliciting Opinions on xB Browser "How To Build" doc

[Jacob Appelbaum <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Arrakis wrote:
> Jacob,
> 
> This might be able to work, assuming we figure out if there are any
> dependencies for win32 Make.
> 
> Actually, I could probably even have Make curl, verify, and unpack the
> latest Tor, Firefox, etc.
> 
> Still doesn't solve all the GUI settings issues, but I guess it is a
> general step in the right direction.
> 

Every successful software project I can think of uses an automated build
process of sorts. If you make UI changes, they will eventually find
their way into a file. How to modify these things isn't something you'd
need to place into an automated build process. It's something you'd want
to put into another document. Your default settings are the files left
after tweaking things to fit your desires. Build your project in an
automated way around files that are already created properly. What you
ship is what needs to be automated. This allows someone to take your
shipped binary and validate your claims.

If you're using subversion, you can easily make a single subversion
server that uses external subversion repositories. This means that you
can have Tor and other projects automatically pulled for a specific
given revision. It should result in something stable without having to
specifically release any code from those projects. This is useful
because it means that users would be getting the source of those
projects from their main distribution points and not you.

Make is very useful though it might not fit your needs because of your
desire to build the software on windows. However, it seems that you're
using lots of software that depends on it for building anyway.

Have you considered trying to make this work with cygwin and automating
everything in simple terms? Once you have something simple, you can
build something more complex.

Regards,
Jacob