Re: [cdt-dev] our newsgroup

["Ed Burnette" <Ed.Burnette@xxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Camelon <jcamelon@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> "I'll just mention one thing that strikes me as 
> extraordinary, even unique: the excellent technical support
> provided in the Eclipse newsgroups by the actual people who
> wrote the code. I know of no commercial product 
> whose support is nearly as good, and no other open source 
> project whose developers are so committed to answering any
> and all questions thrown at them."
> 
>         - Bob Foster, from the foreword of "Eclipse in 
> Action" (Gallardo, Burnette & McGovern)
>            (Hi Ed if you're reading this!) 

Hi!

> I think it would be fair to say that we as a group have not 
> been living up to this claim (although one could perhaps
> debate its validity). 

I think Bob's comment is very valid for most groups, especially eclipse.platform, eclipse.platform.swt, and eclipse.tools.jdt. But the eclipse.tools.cdt newsgroup doesn't see nearly as much traffic as these do, and there are far fewer developers working on it and using it to ask and answer questions. Plus CDT is splintered due to the host specific nature of C and C tools, further reducing the ability of any given person to understand and answer another's question.

Also as you know CDT is nowhere near as mature as the other projects so you keep seeing the same requests and questions over and over. For example, it is not part of the regular builds and versioning like JDT so it's always a stepchild in terms of lagging version support. So far it lacks a fast and smart editor, searching, indexing, building without make files, and does not come with a compiler or debugger. Up until recently it has also lacked the same kind of strong direction and leadership as some of the other projects. This is not intended as a criticism of anybody's effort, just a reflection of the relative lack of resources dedicated to the project, the newness of the project, and the host specific splintering intrinsic to it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the cdt newsgroup gets about the amount of support that I would expect at this stage and as the tool matures and new people start working on it I think you can expect it to just naturally look more and more like the other groups. And having a good FAQ sounds like a fine idea too.

Cheers,
--Ed