Mail Archives: cygwin-developers/2001/03/23/20:52:35
----- Original Message -----
From: "DJ Delorie" <dj AT delorie DOT com>
To: <robert DOT collins AT itdomain DOT com DOT au>
Cc: <cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com>
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: setup revisit
>
> > Yes - and thats the intelligence thats in the apt* tools for debian,
and
> > to a certain extent rpmfind for rpm packages.
>
> The intelligence is in the people who put the packages together, and
> try to predict the problems that users have. The packaging of that
> intelligence is secondary. Plus, there's a lot of registry stuff,
> desktop setup, and mount table stuff to deal with.
I was a little concise on the meaning of intelligence. Picking on a
specific toolset: the benefits that rpmfind & rpm bring to a setup
environment is that the knowledge that the people putting packages
together have put into the package data files is interpreted at install
time to check for conflicts, and copy files/run scripts etc.
A secondary and IMO even more important benefit is the reuse of that
knowledge from other platforms.
I agree that the actual file format is secondary, _but_ I know that it's
a lot easier to take the spec file for a package foo, and build an rpm
for a new target, than it is to create a whole new set of installation
tools.
Thus I'm willing to try and build rpm into a library linked into
setup.exe
> It does. The problem was that there was already a set of tar/gzip
> sources in cygwin, and they were *not* the right sources for the
> versions in setup, so you end up with *two* sets of tar/gzip sources.
Ah. So if we use the same source, there's no issue.
> > So, the link to download setup.exe sources, includes the source
trees
> > for the embedded programs?
>
> Setup currently does not include tar or gzip sources. I used zlib and
> wrote my own tar extractor. Tar's a pretty trivial format.
Sorry for my shorthand - "the link to" should be prefixed by "in a
bootstrap environment ".
> > cannot choose uninstall or skip a a package). Once they are done,
the
> > rpm based installed is launched within the cygwin environment.
>
> So, instead of one setup program, the user would run two?
>
In the bootstrap model, the user would run one. That one would download
the bootstrap files with the same interface used today, and then spawn
other subprocess's as needed. As I indicated a few mails back now, I'm
happy to try and build a single-file setup.exe - I was proposing a
workaround to an incorrect GPL issue I *thought* I saw.
Rob
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