[Dev] Propose getting rid of developer release

[John Anderson]

Heikki Toivonen wrote:

>I think we are now ready to decide what to do about this, so I am
>presenting the following options for a vote:
>
>1) Keep developer (debug) release and end user release. Scrub end user
>release of all tests and tools. Tell developers, including parcel
>developers, that they need to use the developer release. Tell QA/testers
>who want to run unit tests or functional tests that they need to use
>developer release. Change all documentation to make this clear. Need to
>change download links on chandler.osafoundation.org to help people find
>the right release. Note that it won't be possible to run performance
>tests with releases, one needs to build Chandler for that (either make
>install or full build).
>  
>
-1
We shouldn't be telling developers, including parcel developers that 
they have to use the debug release. Likewise testers should be able to 
use both the debug and non-debug versions.

>2) Put everything in the end user release, and drop developer release.
>  
>
-1
What's the point of using asserts in code if nobody ever uses them? If 
we do this we might as well rip all the asserts out of all our code.

>3) Make developer and end user releases identical (except for the fact
>that one has debug binaries and one optimized).
>  
>
-1
The user-release should be a subset of the developer release with 
optimization and no asserts, and minimum footprint.

>4) Something else. Please describe.
>  
>
I think we should have a user release, optimized for users not 
developers, i.e. no asserts, optimized, minimum footprint, but you 
should be able to develop and test parcels and run QA tests with the 
release version -- otherwise how are we going to test it? We should also 
have a debug release, with asserts, no optimization, and rarely used 
developer stuff.

Most developers will probably end up checking out a copy from SVN and 
doing a make install of debug and release. Ideally the prebuild down 
loadable versions should be as close as possible to what you get in 
these situations.

Probably the only real controversy here is how much developer/debug 
stuff to include in the end-user release. For now I'd vote for enough to 
make testing and development possible. Perhaps as we get more "real" 
users, it might make sense to "strip" the end-user release of some of 
this stuff when it is no longer useful, or having an install option that 
excludes some of it.

>  
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