We here at Developer Solutions are intent on making your lives easier.  When I say “your” I mean all the developers out there of course.  One way we’re looking at doing this is to start packaging up our Power Toys in a Power Pack.  Hopefully this will make things easier for you as we release more tools so you don’t have to install each one separately.  We’ve got some pretty neat ideas on how we might theme different packs with different kinds of tools.  But before we get to having something to release, we need to decide how to distribute these packs. 

 

What that means is that this is your first chance to inundate me with feedback.  Here are some things we’re looking at for installing one of these packs:

 

Option 1:  You download a bootstrap installer that goes out and gets the latest tools to install.  In this case you only download the pieces you actually want installed.  This is the model that I’m leaning toward right now.  This is actually a stretch for me personally, I normally don’t like it when I have to download a small installer, only to need an internet connection later on and have it download more files after it gets started.  In this case though I think we can gain a lot of flexibility by doing this.

 

Option 2:  You download an installer that contains everything.  Here you’d have a larger install package to download up front but you wouldn’t need to connect to the net again to get things installed.  This is a much more traditional model for installers; the downside is that with an ongoing development model we have no way of knowing if and when this package starts to feel too big.

 

Now here’s the interactive portion.  You can call it a quiz but all questions are optional if you choose to give me feedback, and if you decide you want to write something that isn’t really an answer to one of these questions that’s perfectly okay too.

 

Question 1:  Would either of these options turn you off from downloading the Power Pack?

 

Question 2:  What bad experiences have you had with either of these scenarios?

 

Question 3:  What good experiences have you had with either of these scenarios? (Come on you knew that one was coming.  ;-) )

 

Question 4:  What would you rather see in place of either of these options?

 

Please don’t be shy about sending your comments.  The more community involvement we get in planning our Power Packs the better they’ll be.

 

-Jeremy