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Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001 13:19:54 -0400
Message-Id: <200104071719.NAA03593@envy.delorie.com>
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From: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
To: joe AT speedtrap DOT freeserve DOT co DOT uk
CC: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
In-reply-to: <001b01c0bf82$722ed760$0101a8c0@oemcomputer>
	(joe AT speedtrap DOT freeserve DOT co DOT uk)
Subject: Re: setup.exe : nice in theory, not-so-clever in practice!
References:  <001b01c0bf82$722ed760$0101a8c0 AT oemcomputer>


> * Separate TCP/IP connections have to be established for each component that
> is downloaded. The speed of a TCP/IP connection typically increases during
> its lifetime. By using lots of shortlived connections rather than a single
> long one, you throw away this benefit.

You can use the IE5 connect to an HTTP server to do it all in a single
connection.  However, the speedup happens pretty quickly, and for
files the size that setup is downloading this loss is negligible.

> * If network problems occur during the installation, you have a
> semi-complete installation.

You should have a semi-complete *download* which you can restart in
the middle (that's harder to do with a single .exe file).  The
installation doesn't start until after all the files are downloaded.

> * If at a subsequent time you wish to reinstall the same version of Cygwin,
> the means of doing this is far from clear.

You run setup in the directory it put the files in, and say "install
from local directory".

> People use "monolithic" installers for a reason. They're atomic (i.e. a
> single file), easy to move from one place to another on your file system,
> easy to manage, and easy to understand.  I do believe the phrase "too clever
> by half" applies to your installer!!!

A monolithic install would be a hundred megabyte .exe.  And moving one
100Mb file from system to system is no harder or easier than moving a
number of files totalling 100Mb in one directory to another system.

> By all means keep the new system, but *please* could you reinstate the
> option of a monolithic installer too???

The old monolithic installer had to be built with the InstallShield
SDK on a windows machine.  We currently don't have such a license that
we can use outside of Red Hat, nor do we have a way of doing such a
thing on a Unix machine, nor would we be able to upgrade individual
packages as they're released.  Would you rather install one 20k
tarball for a bash upgrade, or have to re-download all 100Mb just to
get one new executable?

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