Design question for berrybrew update

[stevieb]

Hey all,

So thankfully, Strawberry Perl is in the beginning stages of providing a JSON document with all of their releases. Here is their first example/mockup.

Currently, in berrybrew, I hand pick releases, add them into an existing JSON file within the install, and allow others to manually edit this file as they see fit.

The entire list is quite long, even using just the portable editions. For instance, each version has a 32-bit and a 64-bit cut, and each 32-bit cut has both a "with USE_64_BIT_INT" and "without USE_64_BIT_INT". I like the entire default list to show up in one cmd window without scrolling.

My question is essentially looking for assistance on how I should decide which versions to include. First, the list file will be included in each distribution as it currently was when that release is done. The user will have to manually run a command line command to fetch any updates.

I'm thinking about including only all 32 and 64 bit portable editions in the berrybrew available command, with some options to include others:

berrybrew update_perls # only look for new default includes
berrybrew update_perls include PDL
berrybrew update_perls include 64_BIT_INT
berrybrew update_perls all

etc. After the new JSON data is fetched, we'll run a routine that will reformat everything to how it is used internally.

What are your thoughts on this? If you use Perlbrew, is there anything you wish was/wasn't being done?

All suggestions welcome, as I'm in the extremely early stages of drumming up a design on how this will be approached (and hopefully, make decent decisions early on, as to minimize work after if it needs to be modified).

berrybrew is developed in C#. It is currently being reviewed for porting to C++ because I desire to get rid of the .Net requirement, if possible. However, that doesn't affect the outcome of this particular question. That said, any and all suggestions to how the software operates or acts is welcome, as I'm a *nix person by default, and would love feedback of all sorts from my fellow Monks who use Windows.