[Alexandria-list] 0.6.3 Plans

[Joseph Method]

Hi Cathal, sorry for not getting back to you on this. I zoned out and
didn't get back on it.

I've made some changes to the page:
http://wiki.alexandria-projects.org/wiki/Milestone-0-6-3

> This seems like a lot of work. Do any other mid-sized programs do this?

Well, it's a question of whether  a) to require that all the optional
packages be installed b) not require them and provide instructions on
the website indicating which to install or c) providing a virtual
package so that a power user can opt out of installing the extra
packages. I would say the goal is to avoid getting "where's the
feature in the screenshot" questions, which is why I prefer a or c.

About the suggestion on the wiki page,

Exceptions in the application layer should no longer cause the
application to crash. (In glade_base.rb, the event handling block
should wrap the call to method(handler) in a begin and rescue.)

I have to think about this some more, but I'm thinking that any time
an explicit crash occurs at that level we want to know about it and
correct it. We want the user to send the bug with the exception
message, rather than describe the error or broken behavior which might
emerge further along. Usually crash errors provide a clue. What really
frustrates me and wastes my time are runtime errors in the ruby-gnome2
C code level, which are usually caused by nil being passed in as an
argument to a C function.

-- 
-J. Method