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[News.eclipse.technology.packaging] Re: Downloads page is confusing - questions and suggestions 
Hi Markus,

Thanks for the reply. I do think the packagings are the way to go so am happy to provide feedback and ideas. I want to see this stuff successful!

In your reply you pointed me at the milestone page, which I didn't know existed. This is really what I was looking for, so we're actually close!

Some comments/suggestions:

1) I never found that milestone page. You've added the link from the downloads to the milestone page and that would've solved it for me. It could also be added to the "Important Links" list on the left hand side. It may need to be sprinkled in other locations (e.g. see #3 and #4).

2) The URLs are a bit misleading because the daily build page is called "\downloads" so I was expecting to find everything there (or rather, didn't believe that another page existed).

3) As you noted, other projects should point to the milestone page. This should be promoted as the "public" entry point, with the current downloads (daily) page providing build health feedback to the teams.

4) On the main EPP page (http://www.eclipse.org/epp/), the "Downloads" link in the left hand side (dark blue nav list) points to the daily builds. I'd suggest it point to the milestones page instead, with the the milestone page having a link to the daily builds. Again, first stop for consumers should be milestone so this page should be promoted.

5) The main Eclipse downloads page (http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/) gives all the Europa packages but I couldn't find a link to the current milestones. But then, maybe you don't want to do that, with the idea of splitting "consumer level" products from "developer testing" milestone builds. Dunno. This split is something that we've never properly established in Eclipse. Mind you, I think the great opportunity for the packaging project is exactly around making this division clearer.

Best Regards,
Kevin McGuire

Markus Knauer wrote: 
Hi Kevin,

that's what I like to hear... in fact, these are the first comments on those
download pages. Well, I would have preferred something like... hey,
everything looks pretty good. But at least there are many suggestions on
how to improve the pages. Thanks.

See my comments in the text below.

Markus




Kevin McGuire wrote:

Hi guys,

I'd like to be a good sport and try out the EPP projects because I think
  they're a great idea.  But I find the EPP downloads page
http://www.eclipse.org/epp/download.php
confusing and I couldn't actually download what I was expecting I could.

Some comments:

1) Should be organized by project:

The reason that I went to this page is not that I care about every EPP,
but that I care about a particular one. In this case, I was referred
here by the webtools 3.4 M5 page

http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/downloads/drops/R3.0/S-3.0M5-20080218021547/
that asks if folks could please try out the EPP project occassionally.

Cool. I didn't know that they already have a link to the EPP pages.


The resulting EPP page thus confused me initially because I was
confronted with a table with build IDs along the top.  I'd suggest that
there be a different build/download page for each packaging project to
focus on the packaging the person cares about - less overwhealming and I
could've been linked to the right spot from the webtools page.


Well, my thoughts when I created that page were quite different. I wanted to
create a page which allows to see the build status (red/green) at a first
glance.

=> I will talk with the webtools people and see what we can do. At least we
should clarify the meaning of this 'nightly build page' and the 'milestone
release page' (www.eclipse.org/epp/ganymede.php)


2) Couldn't find the download:

If I click in the table on the topmost "Success" for say JEE, or any of
the other successes, I get what appears to be the build result script.
Where's the actual download?


Correct. I knew that before, but I had no time to change that in the scripts
that re-generate the page content after every build.
The download itself is on a separate download page that is linked from the
build id. I have to admit that this is not really intuitive ;-)


3) Missing milestone granularity:

I really don't want to download a nightly build, what I'd like to
download is something that represents a given milestone of the contained
projects, just like I would for those individual projects.  That way
there's at least a chance that it'll work, and there's something known
to log bugs against. But the table only shows the last four autobuilds
that only takes me back two days, and I didn't see an archive.


Yepp. You are right again - this is not clear on this page. As a quick fix
I've added a note on the top of that page that points to a location with
the 'stable' Ganymede milestone releases.

So in total the page was a complete failure for me, which is a shame. 

Let's try to change this!


The more we can increase the consumability of this page, the more we can
increase use of the packaging projects prior to GA, which seems a good
thing.

Cheers,
Kevin



Thanks again for the comments. I'll work on an improvement, but let us know
if you have more suggestions.

Markus