Re: setup revisit

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

We've already been over most of the arguments in the past.  The original
version of setup.exe did include a cygwin1.dll and extracted a tar,
gzip, etc.

When DJ rewrote setup.exe he opted not go go this route.  Maybe he can
reiterate his reasons for doing this.

cgf

On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 07:27:43PM +1100, Robert Collins wrote:
>What's the general take on the following two options:
>
>1) Setup.exe does everything. It's all in the one exe, there's no
>"bootstrapping" concept.
>2) Setup.exe downloads a _very_ minimialistic cygwin environment, and
>then uses that to do the rest of the install. Such an environment might
>consist of cygwin1.dll, tar,rpm,rpmfind.
>
>1:
>benefits:
>*less to go wrong,
>*it's all pretty all the way.
>downside:
>*it's _much_ harder for us to leverage unix tools (and remember that
>also impacts getting contributors). *Understanding symlinks is also
>harder.
>*Users can't upgrade userland tools from within cygwin.
>
>2:
>benefits:
>* very easy to leverage unix tools.
>* much more flexability.
>* contributors can work with the native interface to the packaging
>format. This includes things like automatic menu driven config prompts..
>Note that included menus should be data driven so we can probably make
>them GUI fairly easily.
>downside:
>* it won't be pretty when the real work occurs -- at least not unless we
>include gtk+/win32 and a gui rpm/rpmfind!
>* The "bootstrap" intial tarball will be around 1-1.5 Mb (cygwin1.dll is
>600 Kb on it's own).
>
>
>I'm in favour of 2 - IMO we'll get more code reuse and faster turnaround
>time. (All the code for resumable downloads is already written for
>example).
>
>Rob

-- 
cgf@cygnus.com                        Red Hat, Inc.
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