Subject: Re: setup 2.194.2.24: Bug (?) in downloading from internet
From: Sam Edge <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 15:14:21 +0100

Robert Collins wrote in <016301c1ef7b$4d769f00$0200a8c0@lifelesswks>
in gmane.os.cygwin on Mon, 29 Apr 2002 22:42:18 +1000:

> Actually, the current functionality wil do the trick, as long as you
> install what you have downloaded. 

Hmmm. I've just tried using "install from Internet" with bzip2,
sharutils, unzip and zip, on a machine that doesn't have them
installed and killing the connection after bzip2 has downloaded.

When it says "download incomplete, try again" I say "No" and it
attempts to do the install.

I'm then getting "Can't open (null) for reading" errors during the
attempted installation of sharutils (the sharutils sub-directory has
been created but is empty) and a "installation incomplete" message box
at the end but it /has/ installed bzip2.

It's pretty ugly but it does seem to be working and if I reselect
bzip2 when I try again it isn't attempting to download it again so
yes, you could get there even on a slow link. (Not exactly good UI
design though!) ;-)

(While I'm here; BUG REPORT: When I get the "Download incomplete.
Retry? Yes/No" message box in "install from Internet" mode and choose
"No" without it then going on to install any packages I then get a
final message box with "Download incomplete. Retry? Yes/No" again but
only an "OK" button.)

> http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html.

LOL. Yes. I think I can agree with most of this, especially the lack
of UI consistency and the problems with debugging over-featured
design.

> Checkbox's, command line options, and 'special case code' and the
> redownload itself are all kludges around fixing the key problem.

I agree. The best solution is to make a bulletproof method of
detecting whether the local copies are uncorrupted and to keep the UI
uncluttered. But from the general tenor of the discussion at the
beginning I was under the impression that there was some philosophical
or technical reason why this wasn't appropriate. A manual option would
therefore be the next best thing. 

Sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick.

> The real solution is to positively identify corrupt archives and
> transparently remove them (perhaps asking the user whether we should
> delete, backup, or skip over the package).

Yup. Agreed. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis! :-)

Can I also suggest adding reget behaviour at some point, if it can be
done reliably. Getting nine tenths of the way into a 15MB package when
your line goes down is /very/ annoying! ;-(

Finally, I stand by my wish to retain a separate download and
installation invocation option to allow them to occur while logged on
to NT/2k/XP with different permissions, again out of paranoia.

Thanks.

-- 
Sam Edge

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