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Re: setup.exe and release messages


On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 09:32:34AM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>On Jul 21 15:42, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 09:13:31PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>> >Hi,
>> >
>> >
>> >It just occured to me what would be an IMHO really cool extension to
>> >setup.exe.
>> >
>> >What if we could put some simple text file on cygwin.com called, say,
>> >setup.rel, and setup.exe would try to fetch this file and, before
>> >presenting the chooser dialog, open another dialog with a scrollable
>> >text field containing the text from this release message file?  Then
>> >setup.exe would store a hash of the text.
>> >
>> >Later invocations of setup would only show the file content if the hash
>> >value of the text differs from the stored hash value, which obviously
>> >means the file has changed.
>> >
>> >This would allow us to generate arbitrary release messages for important
>> >stuff.  Just to give people an idea that there's some major change, for
>> >instance, the jump from Cygwin 1.5.25 to 1.7.1
>> >
>> >Or consider we have to rework some functionality in Cygwin 1.7 which
>> >turns out to require some user intervention, for instance a
>> >configuration change. 
>> >
>> >This would not only give us a chance to deliver release messages, it
>> >would also give people a chance to stop if they don't feel comfortable
>> >with the described changes.  Well, if they read the message at all, that
>> >is.
>> >
>> >What do others think of that idea?
>> >
>> >And who volunteers to implement it?
>> 
>> I've been thinking about adding some way of reviewing documentation from
>> setup.exe, just like every other installer in the world.  But, that's not
>> quite what you're talking about.  I think you want to display something
>> before the user makes a decision.
>
>Yes, exactly.
>
>> We could add this to the setup.ini file and make it per-package so that
>> caveats or announcements show up on the next screen after the packages
>> are selected.
>
>What if upset adds the content of this setup.rel textfile to setup.ini?
>In this case there's only one file to download.  Setup could look for the
>text and show it as I proposed.
>
>In the long run we could add per-package announcements as part of the
>setup.hint file, just like a version dependent ldesc field.

I think we have to somehow make the announcement per-version don't we?
We wouldn't want the announcement of exciting new features to be
displayed when a user drops back a version.

I've been talking about changing the format of setup.hint files to use
a real markup language.  Maybe this would be the time to do that.

cgf


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