Re: Installing beta (1.7) version parallel to current one

[Dave Korn <dave dot korn dot cygwin at googlemail dot com>]

Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> On May  4 15:01, Dave Korn wrote:

>>   Can we put our heads together and come up with a better plan?  Maybe we
>> should put an actual "Cygwin 1.5 install detected - upgrade or install in
>> parallel" option or dialog somewhere?
> 
> Sure, right, of course, the earlier, the better.
> 
> But the C++ code in setup is crazy.  

  I sympathize completely :)

> I was not able to figure out how to
> do what you propose above.  I really tried when I implemented the ACL
> stuff and using the new registry key and all that in 2008.  I just
> failed to wrap my head around the maniac class system which stores the
> package information and failed to remove the information cleanly when
> the "back" button gets pressed.  The underlying structure of setup was
> apparently never designed for that.
> 
> In theory, we don't want that anyway.  The release version of 1.7 is
> supposed to replace the 1.5 release.  But it would be much better if
> setup would allow a clean parallel install nevertheless.

  Yeh.  Given the problem in making the data structures restartable, I think
out best bet in the short term might be to a) give people an explicit choice
of upgrade or parallel (default to upgrade) at an earlier screen, and
subsequently gray-out the back button.  We could perhaps attach a label next
to it explaining that you have to restart setup altogether, or add a little
"Restart from scratch" button that actually kills and respawns setup maybe.

  I'm looking at gcc and console stuff right now, then I'll come back to this.
  In the meantime, I would love to hear everyone else's ideas for ways to deal
with this glitch, I'll code up whatever we decide would work best.

    cheers,
      DaveK