Message-ID:	<32670CF8.6FE8@cs.com>
Date:	Thu, 17 Oct 1996 21:52:08 -0700
From:	"John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
Reply-To:	fighteer AT cs DOT com
Organization:	Three pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt
MIME-Version:	1.0
To:	grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl
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
References:	<Pine DOT NEB DOT 3 DOT 95 DOT 961017102030 DOT 16494B-100000 AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl>

Mark Habersack wrote:
> 
> >hook, but that's a bit complex for so simple an issue.  Note that I
> >don't really care what happens when Ctrl-Break is hit, except that I
> But it bypasses all of your exit procedures if it's not handled by some signal
> handler inside your app. Or does it? If the interrupt doesn't get to program
> then the file buffers might remain unflushed.

As it turns out, this is not in fact the case, so I will refrain from
worrying about it further.  In any case, my program takes care to flush
all buffers after every output command, since it isn't overly concerned
with i/o speed.  I may be dense sometimes, but I'm not stupid!  :)

> But I think we should avoid making user download UNZIP to unpack the install
> package. It should be an SFX with all the initial stuff needed.

Okay.  Seems like the pros of this solution outweigh the cons.

> That's right. ZIP is so commonly know that we can assume everyone is familiar
> with it. However, now and then, I see some complaints from people using PKZIP
> that they didn't get an expected dir structure and they ask why? Besides DJGPP
> is being packed with InfoZip's ZIP which uses the newest Deflate algorithm.
> >From PKZIP products only version 2 supports it. And I know many people that
> still use version 1 of PKZIP which will refuse to unpack such archives.

Odd... seems to me that the latest PKZIP version has been out for
sufficiently long that everyone should have it by now.  I mean, the
version number hasn't changed in several years!  And if people are using
that old a version, there's no excuse not to upgrade.

> I also that PKZIP doesn't see files in package that are stored with filenames
> in lower case. Facing that, I'd opt for an SFX ZIP archive that'd contain in
> addition to all necessary for install files, a copy of InfoZip's UNZIP
> utility. The latter is much more convenient to use as it does process ALL zip
> archives.

I wasn't aware that PKZIP cared beans about the case of files.  If you
are running on an LFN-based system, you may run into some slight
troubles, but upper/lower case should only matter if there are two files
in the archive whose names are identical except for the case.  And if
that's the case (pardon the pun), then there's a major problem with the
archive to begin with; i.e., it's not intended for MS-DOS systems
period.

Besides, I have successfully unzipped an archive that was created on a
Unix filesystem with files in a mixture of upper and lower case.  I
don't know if that was because of the way the Unixy zip program handled
filenames, but it would have to preserve case in case it was unzipped on
another Unixy system, right?

> Well, I wouldn't be so sure. There are many complete newbies to both 'net and
> programming in general, not mentioning djgpp. It's obvious that djgpp differs
> from other, commercial, packages. It would make even users changing from other
> compilers to djgpp. There are many people that were advised to use djgpp and
> they want do it. I suppose there'll be even more of them when djgpp gets
> released on CD-ROM.

There's a difference between not knowing anything about the compiler and
not knowing how to extract a zipfile.  I mean, how difficult is it to
download something called 'install.exe', run it, and then run the
'install.bat' file that it contains?

I hadn't thought about the CD-ROM before, but it introduces several
different issues to the table anyway.  Given the vast amount of storage
possible on a CD-ROM, it would be child's play to include _all_ the
djgpp files on the CD and have a custom install program that asks the
user what packages to copy to the HD and intalls them itself.  Of
course, you wouldn't have the installer in an archive - it should be
right there in the root directory of the CD, accompanied by CWSDPMI.EXE
and any other programs (like djverify) needed for the process, and it
should copy itself in the process of installation.  Heck, you could put
half the SimTel archives on the CD-ROM and still have room to put in
Emacs and f2c, and you'd have to either write a separate installer for
each one or have the main one handle that as well.  My point is that a
CD-ROM based distribution is a whole different kettle of fish.

> You said it, almost. But most games are shipped in cute boxes with huge
> 'Getting Started Manual' in the box. User has just to put the disk into the
> drive and type install. With djgpp s/he has to download ALL that's necessary
> to type 'install', namely: CWSDPMI.EXE, DJVRFY2.EXE, DJVERIFY.BAT,
> INSTALL.BAT, DJINST.EXE, INSTALL.DAT and possibly more. While all install.*
> files my seem obvious for anyone, the rest of them not necesssarily does.

Look, even if the installer were just packaged in a plain .ZIP archive,
it would include all those above files.  Whoever said _anything_ about
making users download each program individually?  That's insane!

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I |        fighteer AT cs DOT com          |
| Proud owner of what might one   |   http://www.cs.com/fighteer    |
| day be a spectacular MUD...     | Plan: To make Bill Gates suffer |
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