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From: Andrew Schulman <andrex AT alumni DOT utexas DOT net>
Subject:  popularity-contest for Cygwin?
Date:  Fri, 30 Sep 2005 11:57:50 -0400
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Debian has a package called popularity-contest:
http://packages.debian.org/stable/misc/popularity-contest.  The package
installs a cron job that mails in statistics once a week about which Debian
packages the user has installed, and which ones they're using.  This allows
the Debian team to track which packages (and versions) are most often used. Of
course this is entirely a self-selected sample, since no user is required to
install the package.  But that doesn't seem to introduce any bias.

popularity-contest seems like a useful tool, and I wish there were a similar
one for Cygwin.  Of course it requires server support, which could be a large
project.  I'm not suggesting we try to implement it-- I certainly don't have
the time.  But maybe there's some simpler approach.

I maintain 14 packages for Cygwin.  Some of them need almost no maintenance,
but others need fairly frequent updates.  I don't mind, but I do sometimes
wonder whether anyone is using some of them.  As things stand now, I have no
way of knowing, except by following the mailing lists, if even one person has
installed or is using some of my packages (lablgtk2? orpie? stow?).  A
popularity-contest-like tool would help all of us Cygwin packagers to focus
our efforts on the tools that are most useful to users.

Anyone have any thoughts about how to implement such a tool?  Volunteers to
take it on? :)

Andrew.


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