[Lazarus] Lazarus platform "popularity contest"

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Bernd Kreuss wrote:
> On 10.08.2010 22:29, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> 
>> I don't know how anybody else feels, but I'd have no objection to a 
>> "popularity contest" extension which submitted anonymous platform 
>> details 
> 
> This would be cool! Maybe even FPC itself could create these statistics.
> Something like this with really big numbers (after aggregating all
> users) would look quite impressive:

I have to say that I don't know how to write this sort of thing, either 
from the point of view of Lazarus or from the point of view of making it 
acceptable to users rather than looking like intrusive spyware.

But I think the really useful thing, far more than just aggregating 
number of lines of code, would be picking up when somebody tried to 
compile either Lazarus itself or an app for a specific CPU/OS/widget 
set, including cases where that combination failed.

How many people get Lazarus (on any platform) and try it out without 
joining the mailing list or commenting on a project forum? Of these, how 
many drop it because they have a problem compiling a project? How can we 
find out where the problem areas are, without getting feedback from 
these anonymous users?

If we had- for example- aggregated statistics for "This copy of Lazarus" 
on one of the about tabs, how could we also roll in e.g. somebody 
attempting to build Lazarus from the command line (make clean bigide) 
who found it didn't work because he'd got the wrong version of the KDE 
libraries (been there done that)?

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]