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From: "Hannu E K Nevalainen (garbage mail)" <garbage_collector AT telia DOT com>
To: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: RE: Why the rash of people bypassing setup.exe to install?
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 17:05:35 +0100
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> On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 05:31:05PM -0500, Rolf Campbell wrote:
> >Well, I maintain an internal mirror for my company, and I use a custom
> >python script to parse our custom setup.ini and fetch the needed
> packages.
> >But, I never used sources.redhat.com.
>
> So, translation: "I have no insight into the problem but I thought I'd
> send email anyway."
>
> cgf

 Sorry Christopher, but did you really READ what he said: AFAICT it is
something like:
 I've got LOADS OF COMPUTERS(or some such) that I wish to have fully updated
CYGWIN installations on; this is what I've decided to do as I feel it is
sane.

 Take a bunch of the above, running setup.exe on their own, and all of the
mirrors will have a huge network load when a number of updates appear.

Here comes more of "I have no insight" to rant on; just shoot (I wouldn't be
too surprised as I haven't read much of the FAQ's and README's):

 Seems to me as there is more interest in cygwin than you expected.
setup.exe COULD have some shortcomings here: e.g. the possibility to have a
company-local "mini-mirror" that (updated by some kind of scripting) can be
used by local machines as source for updating the installed cygwin copies.
NOTE: "scripting" implies AUTOMATIC, e.g. with *no* user intervention at
all.

e.g:

 To have the thing below work AUTOMATICALLLY, with minimal user
intervention:

 [cygwin mirror] --Internet--> [local mirror] --LAN--> [any # of cygwin
installs]


Another side of all this:

 Users tend to not read more than necessary. I've been there myself. Also
taking note of how my friends and work mates act at these occasions.
The larger the amount of descriptive text you have the larger the amount of
FAQ's generated. In other words: I believe there is some kind of quadratic
(y=x^2) relation between README quality and FAQ amount ;-) [i.e. too little
(or too much) text -> high amount of FAQ's]

 May I suggest that you(the cygwin dev group) add a bullet list on
www.cygwin.com in the following style, at the very top of the page:

	    THE EASY WAY TO INSTALL CYGWIN
	    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
		1 ) download "setup.exe" (Cygwin Package Manager or whatever)
		2a) run "setup.exe"
		2b) decide where to put "local mirror"
		    (.e.g. C:\cygwin\mirror\)
		2d) decide "which mirror" to get packages from
		    (e.g. ftp://ftp.blah.net)
		2d) hit "GO"

 At most FIVE items or so, I'd say.

/Hannu E K Nevalainen, Mariefred, Sweden - undergrad who shld be do'in his
hmwrk


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