Thank you for this great software! Seeing how not only me, but many others struggle installing the software correctly (and when it works for Malta, it may still crash after hours at the last step for a bigger country), and seeing that many issue reports are not bugs in wahooMapsCreator, but version issues with the underlying tools, I think users would benefit a lot from making this more robust:
The requirements contain many different components with loosely or unspecified versions. For example, the conda command covers only Python packages, and some have version constraints. In contrast, users have to collect Java, osmium-tool, osmosis from somewhere, and hope that wahoomc is happy with it. This can be the Oracle website, homebrew, various repositories of different Linux distributions (no, they are not homebrew). The user is also limited to the last version published in the repository.
It would be nice to have pre-compiled maps as download that could be shared. There may be good reasons why this is not the case (effort, licensing, hosting), but it is important to keep in mind that users may just want to get: a map. (After all, it wouldn't be scalable if 8 billion people had to build each their own OpenStreetMap/Wahoo maps.)
It would be nice to have a frozen and tested compilation of the required software components that are proven to have worked for some people. I think the best way to achieve this is a Docker image (or a reproducible Dockerfile with pinned versions).
Thank you for this great software! Seeing how not only me, but many others struggle installing the software correctly (and when it works for Malta, it may still crash after hours at the last step for a bigger country), and seeing that many issue reports are not bugs in wahooMapsCreator, but version issues with the underlying tools, I think users would benefit a lot from making this more robust:
The requirements contain many different components with loosely or unspecified versions. For example, the conda command covers only Python packages, and some have version constraints. In contrast, users have to collect Java, osmium-tool, osmosis from somewhere, and hope that wahoomc is happy with it. This can be the Oracle website, homebrew, various repositories of different Linux distributions (no, they are not homebrew). The user is also limited to the last version published in the repository.
It would be nice to have pre-compiled maps as download that could be shared. There may be good reasons why this is not the case (effort, licensing, hosting), but it is important to keep in mind that users may just want to get: a map. (After all, it wouldn't be scalable if 8 billion people had to build each their own OpenStreetMap/Wahoo maps.)
It would be nice to have a frozen and tested compilation of the required software components that are proven to have worked for some people. I think the best way to achieve this is a Docker image (or a reproducible Dockerfile with pinned versions).