GitHub issue forms are used in this repository to facilitate the creation of high quality issues. These provide input
fields for each of the distinct classes of information which will be essential for the evaluation of the issues.
One of these fields is for the user's operating system. A dropdown menu is used for the selection of the high level
operating system type. Previously this only permitted the selection of a single option. A devoted contributor might have
made the effort to determine that the issue applies to multiple operating system types only to be met with the inability
to provide this information via the dedicated field.
The field also did not offer an option to indicate that the operating system was irrelevant to the issue (e.g., a
subject related to the repository assets).
Those issues are resolved by the following changes:
- Configure the field to allow multiple selections
- Add a "N/A" option to the menu
Arduino IDE is packaged for Windows in multiple formats:
- ZIP
- NSIS
- Windows Installer (AKA "MSI")
The interactive installer of the NSIS package makes it the best option for installation by users.
The other use case for the installers is deployment by a system administrator. The Windows Installer package was added
to offer an additional installer option for this specific use case.
In this use case, a "silent install" will often be required. Previously, the Windows Installer package was configured to
start the Arduino IDE after completing the installation. This behavior is likely to be problematic for the very use case
the Windows Installer package was intended for. That configuration was not intentional, but rather a result of using
whatever setting electron-builder happened to provide as a default.
The behavior of the Windows Installer package is hereby changed to not run after installation. This also aligns it with
the behavior of the NSIS package's silent installation (running the installer with the `/S` flag).
The behavior of the NSIS installer is unchanged:
- When in interactive mode: user chooses whether to start Arduino IDE
- When in silent mode: Arduino IDE does not start after installation
* add notes for Windows contributor in BUILDING.md
* rephrase notes for Windows contributor in BUILDING.md
* Update notes for Windows contributor in BUILDING.md
Co-authored-by: per1234 <accounts@perglass.com>
* move Notes for Windows contributors in Build from source section
Co-authored-by: per1234 <accounts@perglass.com>
This project provides the contributors with templates for the fundamental categories of issues:
- bug report
- feature request
This is helpful to the maintainers and developers because it establishes a standardized framework for the issues and
encourages the contributors to provide the essential information.
GitHub's original issue template system is very crude, simply pre-populating the issue description field with the text
from the template file.
https://docs.github.com/en/communities/using-templates-to-encourage-useful-issues-and-pull-requests/configuring-issue-templates-for-your-repository#creating-issue-templates
The contributor may be confused by being presented with a mass of Markdown and placeholder
content where they expected a field to write their issue. They also may find it inconvenient to manuever around the
framework content and replace the placeholder content.
A far better system is now available with GitHub's recently introduced form-based issue templates:
https://docs.github.com/en/communities/using-templates-to-encourage-useful-issues-and-pull-requests/configuring-issue-templates-for-your-repository#creating-issue-forms
The user is now presented with a web form. These may include multi-line input fields that have the same formatting and
attachment capabilities as the standard GitHub Issue composer, but also additional elements such as menus and checkboxes.
The use of this form-based system should provide a much better experience for the contributors and also result in higher
quality issues.
The automatically created issue template chooser provides a menu of links to the available issue report templates as
well as the security policy at the start of the issue creation process.
It is also possible to add additional arbitrary items to the chooser, through GitHub's "Contact Links" feature. These
are defined in a configuration file:
https://docs.github.com/en/communities/using-templates-to-encourage-useful-issues-and-pull-requests/configuring-issue-templates-for-your-repository#configuring-the-template-chooser
These links offer the possibility to redirect support requests and other sub-optimal usages of the issues to the
appropriate location. This benefits the user by providing them with a fast and frictionless path to what they need, and
benefits the maintainers by preventing inappropriate issues.
