04-28-2019, 03:35 PM
(04-27-2019, 09:53 PM)papadoc Wrote: Cent development vs Chromium development is a false equivalence. Cent development is adding or tweaking a bunch of minor features to Chromium, not actively developing the actual browser itself. Occasionally Cent adds new little features or improves existing ones, but for the most part, all the existing tweaks that Cent makes to Chromium will be automated in build scripts. That's not to minimize the amount of work it takes to maintain all those tweaks, because every Chromium update has the potential to break things, and adjustments may need to be made, but the majority should be able to be incorporated from build to build pretty painlessly. You need a fairly powerful computer, the more RAM and CPU threads, the better. With a good one, you should be able to build in under an hour.
As far as there being "only a small number of people working on the Cent", I don't really know a whole lot about the team. Their "about" page is three sentences which basically say "we make a browser". All I know is what I've gathered from browsing the forum, which is that they're Chinese, and they're actively involved in the community, which is more than you can say for most devs. I'd like to know more, but that's good enough, I suppose.
As for them "working on a project on their own free time with limited resources", whether or not that's accurate, it wouldn't exactly be unique. The majority of open source software you use is maintained under similar circumstances. I'm sure many of us contribute to projects in our spare time, that's how the internet works.
Most of us contribute to Cent in a minor way, just by being involved in the forum and providing feedback. This helps development, not only in providing bug reports, but user engagement helps keep devs engaged. What isn't helpful is the extremes all major issues seem to devolve into. If you read my comment, it basically says "you said a few days a couple weeks ago, so what's the holdup?". That's a reasonable question, so there's no reason you need to be making excuses for them, or telling me we should "be grateful for what we get". Users in this forum are constantly making irrational demands, so if you wanna read them the riot act, feel free, but don't respond to legitimate questions in the same way.
We're all here because we like Cent, so of course we appreciate all the effort which goes into it. If they tell us why there are certain delays in development, we understand. Otherwise, when days turn into weeks, users will ask why. Browsers aren't your typical projects, where updates are mostly added features and minor bug fixes. Browsers require constant security updates, and sometimes seriously annoying bug fixes. That's something that you know when you sign up for maintaining a fork of Chromium. You either stay on top of that cycle, or you fade away like so many others have. I'm not talking about an unreasonable time frame, but once you start lagging behind two full versions, that's a bad sign, and cause for concern.
Upgrading Chromium core is sometimes difficult.
Many features may be broken in new Chromium version, and need to be refactored.