Three quick updates:

1) After quite a bit of pain, I found out that my troubles since  
Friday were due to the trunk not working.  I found a tag for 1.9b2,  
grabbed that, and was able to build xulrunner on OS X again.

2) Unfortunately, pyxpcom generates new and interesting errors from  
that branch.

3) Most important to the discussion now, I found another company  
willing to match my bounty for a follow-on bounty.  That is, if the  
first step produces some basic, reliable builds, they would put up a  
second bounty for a next step.

Regarding the comments about which build system, I agree with Mark  
that we need to converge on one.  I won't prejudice the choice.  Mark  
obviously has 99% of the history on this, but Todd mentions some gaps  
that he is interested in.

Let me know if there is interest in a bounty and I'll pursue it.

--Paul

On Jan 22, 2008, at 1:04 PM, Paul Everitt wrote:

> 
>  On Jan 22, 2008, at 11:15 AM, edward baafi wrote:
> 
> > Hi Paul,
> >
> > Would a bounty help?  Meaning, I'd put up some money to get the
> > xulrunner+pyxpcom build system up-to-snuff on the trunk and on
> > autopilot?
> >
> > Sure, why not?
> >
> > If so, is there a reasonable population of people that might be
> > willing to do it for an amount that isn't in 4 digits? :^)  Or, is it
> > a very small group that has a high commercial rate for which they're
> > fully booked?
> >
> >
> > I'm pretty busy and don't usually take on projects for less than 4  
> > digits :) but this could really help the community so I guess I'd  
> > consider it..
> >
> > I don't know what the state of the pyxpcom community is, but why  
> > don't you put together a spec and a price and post it and see (to  
> > this list as well as some of the bounty sites)..  I guess I'm  
> > wondering what would help you and most people get started  
> > quickly..  Would it be a build system that works reliably but still  
> > takes a few hours on a modern machine, or pre-built executables  
> > targeted for Windows/Linux/MacOSX?
> 
>  I like the nightly trunk builds:
> 
>    http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/xulrunner/nightly/latest-trunk/
> 
>  If I could get that, just for trunk, but with:
> 
>  - A few patches applied
> 
>  - PyXPCOM and a bundled Python
> 
>  ....then I'd be happy.  Regarding whether the bounty is "a script  
>  that when run on my computer, produces a DMG" or "a site that  
>  automatically builds for all targets and uploads", I'd say the  
>  latter is way, way too big for discussion. :^)
> 
>  I'd pay $600 to get a really-working version of that.  However, I'm  
>  a bit worried that xulrunner+python isn't a proposition that, once  
>  working now, would stay working later.  I don't get the sense that  
>  someone feels long-term ownership towards it.  There are many who  
>  have contributed incredible work on incredibly hard stuff, but  
>  keeping the bits working isn't a primary activity for them.
> 
>  --Paul