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Message-ID: <009201c0b373$270a6ee0$0200a8c0@lifelesswks>
From: "Robert Collins" <robert DOT collins AT itdomain DOT com DOT au>
To: <cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: setup revisit
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 19:27:43 +1100
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What's the general take on the following two options:

1) Setup.exe does everything. It's all in the one exe, there's no
"bootstrapping" concept.
2) Setup.exe downloads a _very_ minimialistic cygwin environment, and
then uses that to do the rest of the install. Such an environment might
consist of cygwin1.dll, tar,rpm,rpmfind.

1:
benefits:
*less to go wrong,
*it's all pretty all the way.
downside:
*it's _much_ harder for us to leverage unix tools (and remember that
also impacts getting contributors). *Understanding symlinks is also
harder.
*Users can't upgrade userland tools from within cygwin.

2:
benefits:
* very easy to leverage unix tools.
* much more flexability.
* contributors can work with the native interface to the packaging
format. This includes things like automatic menu driven config prompts..
Note that included menus should be data driven so we can probably make
them GUI fairly easily.
downside:
* it won't be pretty when the real work occurs -- at least not unless we
include gtk+/win32 and a gui rpm/rpmfind!
* The "bootstrap" intial tarball will be around 1-1.5 Mb (cygwin1.dll is
600 Kb on it's own).


I'm in favour of 2 - IMO we'll get more code reuse and faster turnaround
time. (All the code for resumable downloads is already written for
example).

Rob