[MinGW-dvlpr] New installer

[John E. / T. <td...@td...>]

Hi, folks!

You may or may not recall that, back in January of this year, I 
expressed interest in reworking the MinGW installer 
(<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.user/25012>). Several 
other projects I'd been working on are now finished, my plate is 
emptier, and I'm now ready to submit a more solid proposal, for 
consideration by MinGW's users and developers, to improve the MinGW 
installer.

As mentioned in the message linked above, I have created a 
versioned-component management system on top of NSIS that is more 
feature-rich than the standard NSIS installer. Here are some of its 
features:
* Component descriptors and installation manifests use XML
* Discriminatory uninstallation: only remove files installed by the setup
    program
* Support online-only or online/offline installers with inner components
* Download latest descriptor file to determine available components
* Update to newer component versions by automatically removing the old 
version,
    then installing the new version
* Let users select from multiple download mirrors
* Unpack zip archives, gzip and bzip2 tarballs, and 7-zip archives, 
maintaining
    original file attributes
* Download component archives with resume capability (uses the Inetc 
plugin for
    NSIS)
* Track multiple installations
* No registry entries created
* Multiuser-environment-friendly

This system is currently in use in a new installer, released two days 
ago (August 2nd), for my unofficial GCC builds for MinGW. The installer 
can be downloaded from <http://www.tdragon.net/recentgcc/>, and the 
source code is available at 
<http://downloads.sourceforge.net/tdm-gcc/tdminstall-1.808.1.zip>.

A minimum of modification should be necessary to convert these sources 
into an official installer for the MinGW project. Therefore, I propose 
that this installation system be used as (or as a base for) a new MinGW 
installer, subject to your critique. Should my proposal be accepted, I'm 
also willing to provide any level of maintenance in continuance on the 
installer deemed appropriate.

The installer system is obviously at a usable and (hopefully) mainly 
bug-free level of functionality currently, but I will be working on it 
in the following minor areas in the immediate future:
* Documenting the code (*grin*)
* Improving the UI for component and version selection (current tree 
view feels too cluttered/clunky; need ideas...)

Your response appreciated,
John E.