Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Message-ID: <009d01c1d81c$a51cda60$0101a8c0@albion> From: "Cliff Hones" To: References: <20020330165458 DOT A286 AT ping DOT be> Subject: Setup.exe thoughts and queries Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 18:55:11 -0000 Organization: Aonix Europe Ltd. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 I have a problem with the new setup. Its current behaviour in "download from internet" mode is non-intuitive (for me). I can't report it as a bug, as I've not seen its intended action documented in enough detail anywhere, so this is likely cockpit error. [And don't take that as a criticism; I know the setup work is ongoing and the time needed to write a user guide hasn't yet been found by anyone.] My expectation was that the "download from internet" mode would be totally independent of any current Cygwin installation on the machine doing the download. This would make it ideal for downloading for later installation to multiple machines, and for enabling a damaged installation to be easily wiped and reinstalled from scratch. I assumed that all the info on the download, including mirror(s) chosen, proxy setting, and package selection, would be held in the downloaded directory structure, and that when re-run setup would determine which packages were up to date, and which had newer downloads available. Indeed, I envisaged that it would be reasonable to have more than one "local download directory" on a given machine - eg so one could be kept as a fully-tested baseline, and one could include experimental and new releases. But it seems to me that the contents of the current Cygwin installation plays a part in how setup decides what to download. This I find confusing for a number of reasons. Of course it conflicts with my preconcieved model (above), but also: . Since download from internet can be used on a machine with no Cygwin installation, it can work without the installation info. . When "download from internet" is run twice in succession, the second run doesn't notice some (any?) of the downloads performed by the first run, so you get them all again. . The value of separating download from install is reduced by having this interdependence. It seems the only logical thing to do after a download is to immediately install exactly what was downloaded - which might as well have been done as the download progressed in the first place. As an experiment I renamed my cygwin installation, and ran setup in download mode. When it had finished it had created a new Cygwin installation directory containing etc/setup/timestamp and var/log/setup.log[.full] I use Cygwin at home and work. It is quicker to copy the Cygwin download directory via a laptop than to repeat the transfer. But I'm concerned that this could confuse setup. Apologies for the length of this. I would dearly like to know if the current setup is (with regard to download) performing as intended; what the intention was; whether my naive idea of its action was ever a design goal, and if not whether setup can be used effectively for managing multiple installations. A few words from Robert et al here or in the FAQ or homepage could well save a lot of confusion and wasted time for me and others. Another point - the Cygwin mailing lists page states that the appropriate list for this discussion is cygwin-apps, but also says that this list is by-approval. It doesn't say that only subscribers can submit to this list, but I've seen this mentioned elsewhere. As I'm not subscribed to cygwin-apps, and I'm sure the intention is not to stifle discussion on setup, I'm mailing here. BTW - setup.exe 2.194.2.22 runs fine for me on W98 SE. Cliff -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/