Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 13:11:14 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Mark Habersack <grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl>
Reply-To: grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
cc: "John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>, djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Install thingy
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.961014073641.16204R-100000@is>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.95.961015130455.10709A-100000@ananke.amu.edu.pl>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Mon, 14 Oct 1996, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>IMHO, install need not run on anything that can't run DJGPP.  Detecting 
>such machines is the task of djverify; no need to duplicate efforts and 
>code.  Run djverify at the beginning and if it returns one of the fatal 
>errors, gracefully exit telling user to upgrade.
Well, relaying on djverify to detect any problems is certainly making things
easy. However to support this way of operation I'd have to further modify the
stub code. If djverify fails to run for some reason (e.g. i cannot load DPMI
host or anything else that prevents the COFF image from being run) I'd have to
check the return code in RM stub to present the user some explicative error
message. I think that install should be as explanative and clear in reporting
ALL errors and that this way of handling things is necessary. Of course, I'd
handle in stub only these errors that prevent the COFF image from being
loaded. The other ones would be remembered and handled as a first thing in
main().

>If djverify detects non-fatal problems (like missing environment 
>variables and such), you can repair those problems temporarily (by e.g. 
>setting the missing variables) and do the installation.
That's easy. 

>If the problem that bugs you is the chicken-and-egg problem, namely that 
>you need to install DJGPP in order to run a DJGPP program (the 
>installer), then it can be easily solved: all you really need is a DPMI 
>host.  So having a stand-alone image (with PMODE or Charles unreleased 
>version which writes CWSDPMI image the first time it runs) is all you 
What does it mean it 'write...'??? Is there any version of CWSDPMI that can be
attached to COFF just like pmode can? I'd prefer it this way, certainly.

>need to do.
>

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