Subject: A bug (?) in the current setup.exe 2.78.2.15
From: "Fergus" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Fergus on Linux" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 14:05:01 -0000

Robert,

The recent rapid evolution of setup.exe will, I am sure, result in a greatly
improved application with many felicitous enhancements. I hope you will not
mind a quick report of a one-off finding in the current setup.exe
v.2.78.2.15 which stands a much greater chance than it might otherwise have,
of being completely irrelevant. Sorry. But here goes, all the same ...

On my 2nd Cygwin machine I do not have internet access and therefore
maintain locally a directory \Cyg0\, containing just the current file
setup.exe and current subdirectories contrib\ and latest\. These two
subdirectories are augmented as new or replacement files/folders are
downloaded (on to my 1st machine). Sometimes, until I clean up, there may be
redundant versions there too.

Yes, that's right, no setup.ini. A deliberate oversight that seems to have
no detrimental consequences, for setup.exe seems to be remarkably
intelligent: selecting the option "Install from Local Directory", it clearly
manages to match (a) whatever the file /etc/setup/installed.db says I've got
installed, with (b) whatever a scan of \Cyg0\ and below says is available. I
have found that setup.exe _never_ wobbles in its update procedures,
accurately telling new from old and old from new ...

... except just this once: it seems to think that ash-20010827-1.tar.bz2
provides an update to ash-20011018-1.tar.bz2, whereas the reverse is the
case.

I just wondered whether there is something easily correctable in setup.exe's
number (date) recognition facility that you might find useful to incorporate
into your present efforts. You're allowed to tell me off for not using
setup.exe in the approved way (i.e. in association with setup.ini) by the
way - and you might even do this! -  but, nevertheless, I hope there may be
an atom of useful information here. (I'm always interested in rendering
procedures, especially install procedures, as sparse as possible.)

Fergus

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