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Mail Archives: djgpp-workers/1996/10/16/13:18:00

Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 19:08:55 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Mark Habersack <grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl>
Reply-To: grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl
To: "John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
cc: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>, eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il, djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Install thingy
In-Reply-To: <3264402B.24E2@cs.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.95.961016190357.14188H-100000@ananke.amu.edu.pl>
MIME-Version: 1.0

On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, John M. Aldrich wrote:

>Ok, here's a basic explanation of the way my modified stub code works. 
>:)
>This seems to me to be all that's needed to make any program fully
>capable of self-diagnosis.  You can do one of two things in your
Agreed.

>installer:

>1) Write the installer as a real mode program and have it invoke the
>djverify executable _directly_, interpreting the return code itself.  As
>an alternative, bind a real-mode executable to the complete djgpp
>program.
I planned to do so (even started to write in TC) but after the discussion and
giving it a thought installer's gonna be a DJGPP app.

>2) Write the installer as a djgpp program and bind it with the _custom_
>stub, then use a batch file similar to mine to interpret any resulting
>error.
That's the route to take.

>NOTE:  If you follow the latter route, you should be aware of a
>potential pitfall in the way djgpp handles the SIGINT signal.  If you
>don't handle SIGINT (Ctrl-C) yourself, your program will return an error
>code of 255 when it exits, which will make the batch file barf thinking
>it is dealing with a standard stub.  The solution (which I followed in
>djverify) is to install a handler for SIGINT which returns a benign
>error code such as 1.  I discovered this minor problem while debugging a
>poorly written use of cgets() in my program.  :)  I don't yet know about
>Ctrl-Break handling.
Isn't Ctrl-Break handled by BIOS and intercepted by DOS which is, in turn,
intercepted by our signal handler?

>As for archiving methods, the only one I'm really familiar with is
>pkzip, but you can use pkzip to create a self-extracting archive.  You
>can also bind a comment to the archive that is automatically displayed
>when the archive itself is extracted.  It could contain a basic blurb
>plus instructions to run "install".  I'm sure something similar is
They say there are zip2sfx converters that allow you to run a specified file 
in the end of unpacking process. Have any idea on where to find one?

>possible with the various freeware archivers, but it's best if we make
>the distribution in a familiar format.
Well, there's always RAR with its script language. What do you think?

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