Hi folk! So 2.5.8 is finally released, with many thanks to Derek for building the MSI for us! So what now? I’m sure you’ve all see the client strategy post here. The primary development of Spark will move at a slower pace than in the past. However it’s a fun project for me in my free time, so there will likely be more development on it “off hours” so to speak, especially when I need a break from my primary projects. Those of you who are interested in hacking on Spark, please feel free to and send patches my way! I’d love to get more involvement from the community! That said, I have a couple of primary focuses.
Find a way to build those bloody MSI files in an automatable way so we don’t run into it causing delays in the future
Evaluate the existing bug reports and try to clean things up.
Improve it’s feel/functionality under Mac OS X.
Fix things that I don’t like in my daily use of it.
I don’t have a time frame on the next release, as Spark will be developing at a slower pace than previously. But again, if you are interested in helping, please check trunk out of SVN and patch patch patch! =) I will need you to have signed a contributor agreement with Jive though. Please contact me if you are interested in helping and haven’t signed it.
Not sure I said everything I wanted to say. LOL Questions?
Yes, one quick question. I’m a newb to this whole Spark adventure; having distributed the client to our employees not even 2 weeks ago. I assume that we have to upgrade the version manually, by installing the new version over the older one?
Thanks and great job! We’ve gotten positive raves about the software!!
In general, yes, install the new one over the old one. =) I’m not real fluent in distributed install mechanisms, but in theory there are a number of ways to do distributed installs without having to touch each machine directly!
Depending on your setup, each and every person may get a notification that there’s a new version and could upgrade themselves that way.
I’m hoping someone else will pipe in with better distributed install experience. =)
Secondly - have you considered looking at old patches that have been submitted. I seem to remember quite a few people complaining about submitted patches not being looked at. One particularly useful such patch was regarding modifying Spark to deal with multiple resources (allowing you to see and send to them). Perhaps worth investigating?
And that’s not a bad idea. Actually, anyone who’s submitted patches for Spark who thinks I should look at them. Please post links here or email me the patches (daniel.henninger@jivesoftware.com) please!