X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org
Message-ID: <46900F66.50FBC047@dessent.net>
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:10:46 -0700
From: Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Setup offers bad directory for Local Package Directory
References: <1183805105 DOT 468f6eb1e2a23 AT webmail DOT volja DOT net> <468F75A7 DOT 79582C26 AT dessent DOT net> <1183823939 DOT 468fb84379ca6 AT webmail DOT volja DOT net> <468FBC10 DOT 7090202 AT cygwin DOT com> <1183832613 DOT 468fda25eaef6 AT webmail DOT volja DOT net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-IsSubscribed: yes
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Id: <cygwin.cygwin.com>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com

David Balazic wrote:

> Wouldn't $TEMP/cygwinfiles be a better default than "random" ?

It's really just a difference of expectations.

Wearing my user hat, I find it reasonable that setup offers the default
of CWD for the location to store downloaded files, because my use case
is saving setup.exe to a folder and then clicking on it, and so having
it offer that folder as a default location is reasonable and correct to
me, and not random or unexpected in the least.  I would personally be
quite angry if it defaulted to trying to store anything under %TEMP%
because that is a location for temporary files, not things that should
persist, and I find as user that having a populated local package
directory is extremely handy for updating/installing Cygwin without
needing to download anything -- I do not consider this temporary storage
in any sense.

Wearing my developer hat, you can never win in this situation because no
matter what you do you will always break some users' expectations.  By
definition the choice will seem illogical or incorrect to some portion
of users.  The best you can hope for is to aim for least surprise, and
thus by simply using CWD we remove as much arbitrariness as possible.  I
find it difficult to be persuaded that this should be changed because A)
it only affects the first time you run setup and B) it has been this way
for many years and this is the first time that anyone has reported
finding it odd.  (Of course there could certainly exist reports that
I've not seen.)

> is so complicated that an outsider should download sources and create patch.

For better or worse the only hard currency of the FOSS world is the
patch.

Brian

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/