From: "John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: [Q] .mft files
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 16:45:23 -0800
Organization: Two pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt
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George Foot wrote:
> 
> :   I was just wondering what the .mft files that come with
> :   various djgpp .zips were for.  Are there programs which
> :   make use of them for (un)installation of a given package?
> 
> I'm not sure if there is any official program to do what you say, but I
> have written a utility which uses the .mft files in various ways, including
> uninstalling a package, checking that the package is fully installed, and
> tracking the location of a file in a set of archives. It was not originally
> intended for use with DJGPP, but it should work on it.

I too am using the manifests for such a purpose in my DJVERIFY
diagnostic utility.  The big thing I'm working on for the next release
is a system which detects installed packages, ranks them according to
required/recommended/optional, gives a brief description of each, and
tracks which additional packages are required to use them.  I have also
included the ability to look up a file in the manifests.  That's why
it's taking me so long to do the next release.  :)

I'm not sure if installation/uninstallation really falls into the realm
of DJVERIFY functionality.  On the other hand, Mark Habersack's
installer program may indeed be a suitable place for such a task.  The
real problem with using the manifests to uninstall things is that some
packages contain duplicate files.  For example, the 'djcrx201.zip'
package contains a lot of files that are also in 'djdev201.zip' (which,
btw, causes DJVERIFY to claim that I have installed djcrx201 when in
fact I haven't - I'm working on a solution for this).

FWIW, I think it's a bad idea to depend on the user having all the
manifests installed, as some users delete them.  So for DJVERIFY I
simply created a data file with all the manifests in it.  This data file
is separate from the program itself, making it easy to distribute
updates when a new package is released.

As always, if anyone would like to test out the latest pre-release of
DJVERIFY, you are welcome.  I haven't put it up anywhere yet because I'm
not finished with the next version, so just email me.  I expect that
after this release I will go into beta and an announcement will be
posted to that effect.

hth!

-- 
John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I <fighteer AT cs DOT com>

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