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Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:36:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
cc: Andrew Schulman <andrex AT alumni DOT utexas DOT net>
Subject: Re: popularity-contest for Cygwin?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.63.0509301330030.25428@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.63.0509301332230.25428@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
References: <jinqj1ll2dnc1d2u18l373o2fjdbohcglt AT 4ax DOT com>  <Pine DOT GSO DOT 4 DOT 63 DOT 0509301330030 DOT 25428 AT slinky DOT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
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On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:

> 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.

In the usual "5 seconds after hitting send" manner, I realized that I
didn't mention that the solution below requires no server support.

> 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)
  ^^^^^
...and this should obviously be "trawl" or "troll".  Eek.

> attachments, and extract whatever info you need. :-D

FWIW, the web interface makes it very easy to discern those attachments
(though a robust script could simply search the messages and all
attachments for "Cygwin Configuration Diagnostics" and/or "Cygwin
Package Information").
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
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     |,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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