Subject: Installshield
From: [email-masked] (Hugh Winkler)

5 Sep 1998 05:50:22 -0700
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I would like to second, third, and fourth the sentiments others have
expressed here, that Cygnus ought to dump Installshield in favor of a zip
file, a .reg file, and a README describing changes to make to scripts in
case you install somewhere besides the default.

A. The Installshield setup is *very fragile*. I have *never* successfully
run it to completion. The only time it ever has completed, I stepped it over
a fault in my debugger. And I did in fact have a clean temp directory. And
just now, testing the usertools distribution, some other crazy bug crashes
it.

B. When it crashes, you have no recourse. There's no way to get inside the
Installshield compressed files without their tools.

C. It's *painfully* slow on NT. Long mysterious pauses of no activity. Why
use a 16-bit installer for Win32 machines, anyway?

Everyone using cygwin32 is capable of understanding what is needed to get
the cygwin tree installed, but we can't workaround the Installshield
"shield".

Here's how the install should work:

1. Unzip the directory tree files. Put it in C:\cygnus\b19 or somewhere
else.

2. If you put it in the default place, run the .reg file that describes the
setup of HKCU\Software\Cygnus solutions\Cygwin.DLL setup\b15.0\mounts\...,
and same for HKLM. To run it, just double click it. If we installed
elsewhere in step 1, need to edit this file first. The README tells us how
to do it.

3. If you installed somewhere else, also modify the cygnus.bat file
accordingly. Again the README can describe the changes in a sentence.

4. Make an explorer shortcut to cygnus.bat.

Thanks to the Cygnus guys for their well-intentioned efforts, but this
procedure would be a lot more stable and easier than the current procedure!

Hugh Winkler
Scout Systems, Inc.

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