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Re: Packages that change without incrementing the version/release


Christopher Faylor wrote:
On Fri, Nov 19, 2004 at 12:27:47PM -0000, Max Bowsher wrote:
Anyway, this means many users are likely to have old 'invalid' versions of
these packages. Which means, that before I can release a new setup, I need
to make setup recover gracefully, rather than exiting at the first error as
it currently does.

Different sizes should be irrelvant. The MD5s will not match between the package disk and the one in setup.ini. Doesn't that force a re-download?

Currently, setup more-or-less ignores incorrectly-sized files - i.e. does nothing, not even flagging their invalidity to the user. In download mode, that might trigger a re-download without notification as to why it is happening. In install-local mode, it causes an internal error in setup in some cases - or even leads to silently abberrant behaviour - like installing the source package instead of the binary!


Currently I'm thinking along the lines of having setup rename the package
files as it finds them, adding a ".BAD" suffix. As far as user feedback
goes, I will probably go with a MessageBox summarizing all the problems at
the end of the scan, for a short term quick hack to get a new setup out
ASAP. Later though it should become a scrollable log textfield.


Comments on the above?

The more feedback we can provide to the user, the better.

Right.


And one important consequence of this is that packagers must *never* change files without changing the release number, once they have gone to the mirrors - because setup.exe will be telling users that something odd has happened - not just silently ignoring the inconsistency.

Max.




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