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Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:31:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: Andrew Schulman <andrex AT alumni DOT utexas DOT net>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: popularity-contest for Cygwin?
In-Reply-To: <jinqj1ll2dnc1d2u18l373o2fjdbohcglt@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.63.0509301330030.25428@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
References: <jinqj1ll2dnc1d2u18l373o2fjdbohcglt AT 4ax DOT com>
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On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Andrew Schulman wrote:

> 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? :)

We already have such a tool.  It's called "cygcheck".  When people post
their cygcheck output to the list, it also contains the list of packages
they installed.

So, to implement "popularity-contest" for Cygwin, all you need to do is
trall the recent mailing list archives for cygcheck.out (or cygcheck.txt)
attachments, and extract whatever info you need. :-D
HTH,
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

If there's any real truth it's that the entire multidimensional infinity
of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. /DA

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