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Bug 190980

Summary: Hard to get to latest milestone builds
Product: Community Reporter: Chris Aniszczyk <caniszczyk>
Component: WebsiteAssignee: phoenix.ui <phoenix.ui-inbox>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: P3 CC: gunnar, martinae, mknauer, remy.suen, thatnitind, wassim.melhem
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Windows XP   
Whiteboard:

Description Chris Aniszczyk CLA 2007-06-05 04:44:24 EDT
As a committer, I tend to grab the latest milestones often. On the main download page, www.eclipse.org/downloads, we don't even have a direct link to the latest milestone. I think this is a mistake as Eclipse prides itself on releasing stable milestone builds often. 

Can we please include a large link similar to how we include links for distros to the latest milestone and associated new and noteworthy? 

If other people have comments, please feel free to state them here.
Comment 1 Denis Roy CLA 2007-06-05 08:40:56 EDT
I agree that the milestones need to be highlighted, but I disagree that it should be done on the main downloads page.

The Eclipse project has two high-profile pages it can use to showcase its latest offerings, but neither of which even mention downloads:

http://www.eclipse.org/platform/
http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/

I think this bug should be reassigned to the Eclipse/Platform website team.
Comment 2 Martin Aeschlimann CLA 2007-06-05 08:51:40 EDT
I agree with Chris that the milestones download is too hidden. I think it should be shown on the http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ page, together with a link to the milestone's New and Noteworthy. 
Comment 3 Chris Aniszczyk CLA 2007-06-05 08:59:10 EDT
Denis, the common workflow for a developer/user is to goto eclipse.org or find the downloads link. They click downloads and it just shows them the latest stable build along with the distros link (how often is that used ;p).

I think it makes sense to show the latest milestone build also with the proper N&N link here instead of getting to it indirectly via the "All versions" link... 
Comment 4 Wassim Melhem CLA 2007-06-05 09:07:29 EDT
This bug really makes me sad :(
Comment 5 Remy Suen CLA 2007-06-05 09:15:13 EDT
I support the motion of putting the latest M build alongside the latest S build (or R build if you so prefer even though I haven't heard anyone call it that) without having to jump through the "All versions" hoop.
Comment 6 Gunnar Wagenknecht CLA 2007-06-05 09:28:50 EDT
Actually, what I would really like to have is a *single* page that lists all latest SDK milestone downloads for all the Eclipse projects in a simple format

Eclipse SDK 3.3 RC3 * Windows * Linux * ...
WTP SDK 2.0 RC2 * ALL *
EMF SDK ...

In an ideal world, this page would be driven by XML feeds (RSS/Atom/whatever) published by the individual releng teams.

Comment 7 Gunnar Wagenknecht CLA 2007-06-05 09:36:02 EDT
(In reply to comment #6)
> In an ideal world, this page would be driven by XML feeds (RSS/Atom/whatever)
> published by the individual releng teams.

Bug 164390 might be related. It proposes to have an RSS feed with all the official releases. This feed would be an aggregation of project release feeds. Those feeds could be generated during builds. We just need another feed for the latest milestones. Smells like another planet feed. Yummy. :)
Comment 8 Nitin Dahyabhai CLA 2007-06-05 13:53:12 EDT
One thing to consider is that everyone who's for this change already knows how to get the Milestone/Stable build they're looking for.  For new users of Eclipse, the Release version is exactly what they should be steered to.
Comment 9 Denis Roy CLA 2007-06-05 13:59:22 EDT
Comment 8 reflects what was decided in bug 90371

-1 from me.  The main downloads page is cluttered enough as it is.
Comment 10 Gunnar Wagenknecht CLA 2007-06-05 14:55:24 EDT
(In reply to comment #9)
> The main downloads page is cluttered enough as it is.

Right, but what about the feed? That's one thing that developers could easily bookmark in the feed reader of the choice.

Comment 11 Denis Roy CLA 2007-06-05 15:05:28 EDT
(In reply to comment #10)
> Right, but what about the feed? That's one thing that developers could easily
> bookmark in the feed reader of the choice.

Sorry, I meant to voice my -1 re: putting huge milestone links on the main download page. 

I agree with bug 164390.
Comment 12 Denis Roy CLA 2007-06-06 21:58:19 EDT
Bug 187879 comment 9 is the very reason why it's *very* important for us to keep the main downloads page simple. Veretans know what to get and where to get it, newcomers don't, and they're intimidated by all the download links.

Here's a page that *always* has the latest everything... When used in conjunction with Bookmarks, it makes the latest stable build only 2 clicks away:
http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/
Comment 13 Gunnar Wagenknecht CLA 2007-06-07 01:34:55 EDT
(In reply to comment #12)
> Here's a page that *always* has the latest everything... When used in
> conjunction with Bookmarks, it makes the latest stable build only 2 clicks
> away:
> http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/

That's only the SDK. There are more projects on Eclipse. As I understand this request, there should be a *single* page that lists all the latest milestones of each project. I think that's a must have because we encourage the community to try out milestones and help us with testing and reporting problems early. 

While I agree that we should not confuse newcomers with that page and all the downloads upfront I still think that there should be a link somewhere on http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ titled "latest development milestones" (or so) to that page.

What do people think? Would a feed be sufficient?
Comment 14 Bjorn Freeman-Benson CLA 2007-06-07 01:41:24 EDT
The /projects/ page should be a place where one might go to find that kind of thing. But we need bug 134275 and bug 177868 to be implemented before we can add milestone downloads.
Comment 15 Denis Roy CLA 2007-06-07 08:44:12 EDT
(In reply to comment #14)
> The /projects/ page should be a place where one might go to find that kind of
> thing. But we need bug 134275 and bug 177868 to be implemented before we can
> add milestone downloads.
> 

I think this is a great idea.
Comment 16 Denis Roy CLA 2007-06-21 15:37:13 EDT

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 130150 ***