Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 10:02:05 +0300 (IDT) From: Eli Zaretskii X-Sender: eliz AT is To: Kbwms AT aol DOT com cc: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: LBInstDJ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk On Mon, 12 Apr 1999 Kbwms AT aol DOT com wrote: > It is through bitter experience that I warn of the unknown dangers that > lurk out there. There is simply nothing to be gained by venturing into > uncharted waters by changing a critical device like autoexec.bat. It is > better to tell the user what has to be done and let it go at that. IMHO, if we accept this, the whole idea of the installer is null and void. After all, we already *tell* the user, and IN SO MANY WORDS, how to edit their configuration files. And they still fail to do it right, even when they *do* read the docs. What exactly will be gained by having a program which tells it yet again? I expect to see the same amount of complaints and FAQs on c.o.m.d., only this time they _will_ have an installer to complain about. Today's users are spoiled by a clickable install.exe that magically does everything, even reboots if necessary. A program that tells them to do it by themselves won't have any added value whatsoever, even if it writes down a tentative autoexec.bat, since this is NOT what they expect from the garden variety install.exe. Now, I'm well aware of the potential hazards in making a good installation program for DJGPP. Why do you think we don't have one in the first place? The complexities involved, and the danger of breaking a working system setup are *precisely* the reason why I refused to write an installation program for the GNU MS-DOS/MS-Windows CD-ROM when I worked on that. I think all of the people involved in this discussion have enough experience on their hands to know how hard this is. (And note that we didn't even begin to talk about systems like Windows/NT and the surprises of multiple autoexec.bat files in Windows 98...) But this is exactly the challenge of writing a good installer: how do you _handle_ all these complexities in a reasonable way that makes most users happy. If we think that this undertaking is too dangerous, let's just quit now and not make the situation worse.