From: Eli Z. <el...@gn...> - 2012-04-30 15:37:23
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In an attempt to provide more constructive feedback, I took a brief look at mingw-get. What's below is the list of issues that "bothered" me while reading the docs and trying some simple commands. FWIW, I'd hesitate to use an installer, even an established and stable one, unless these issues are resolved. I hope the list below will be useful. First, I think the documentation needs to be more detailed. All I found was a short README, which describes only some of the options, and a 90-line output from --help. For example, the "remove" action is almost completely undocumented. I would expect to find answers to the questions below in the docs. . Is there a way to install a specific version of a package? The available documentation seems to indicate that this is impossible (help screen says to use "[subsystem-]name[-component]" spec). Installing an older-than-latest version is sometimes necessary, if the latest one has some serious bug, or is incompatible with some other piece of software on the user's machine. AFAICS, the "list" action doesn't show available versions, although the XML manifest files do include more than a single version. . Similarly, is there a way to "downgrade" a package? If not, IMO there should be. . What will mingw-get do if some DLL installed as part of a package or its dependencies already exists? Will it silently overwrite it? will it ask me for confirmation? do something else, like suggest a different installation directory for the new package? . Similarly, when I uninstall a package, what happens with DLLs that were that package's dependencies? Are they deleted as well? does mingw-get maintain some "reference count" for each DLL, and removes a DLL only when no one else uses it? If so, does it do that silently or does it ask for permission? |