Re: [Mingw-users] Stop on first error?

[Jasper H. <jas...@gm...>]

Keith Marshall wrote:
> Isn't http://mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started sufficiently obvious?

Apparently not.

(though in combination with burying mingw-5.1.6 it might be)

> If you want to contribute one, be my guest; I will not be wasting even
> one more second on development of an NSIS based solution.

How about not continuing the old type of installer, but simply having
an installer that contains an archive containing the results of a
manual install which it extracts?
As a temporary solution it wouldn't need an option to download it all
first, nor would it have to be updated every time a package is
updated, nor would it have to have options what to install and what
not to install. I don't believe this should take more than one or two
hours (perhaps with NSIS, but there are other options). It needn't be
a fully functional installer, just something that works well enough
for now.
(Note that I have never done a manual install yet, so I would have to
put some more time into it (though I don't think it would be a
problem, a manual install doesn't seem all that complicated; the main
problem is there only being a step by step guide, not just a simple
"you need to extract these packages to a directory"-type of guide). On
top of that, this would have to be done by someone who has an
installation already - so it can't be done for one's own gain, meaning
it won't be done until it is promised it will be "supported"
beforehand)

> Your time
> would likely be better spent on helping out with the mingw-get XML.

If an installer can get done in less time than it would take to get
mingw-get to work with gcc 4, then I would say it isn't better spend
on mingw-get. With a statistic like 2000 users a day previously
downloading mingw-5.1.6, I think one will currently lose at least a
dozen users every hour who give up on mingw(.org) (some of whom gave
up before, some of whom downloaded the old installer previously), so
every hour saved is valuable.

> So, you think it necessary to provide a GUI installer for a product which
> is designated for CLI use?  If a user can't type (at a CLI prompt):
>
>   mingw-get install foo
>
> how do you expect them to manage:
>
>   gcc -o foo.exe foo.c

Through an IDE?

Nevertheless, it is indeed most important to have some installer
working first, not necessary a GUI installer (though I would like to
second a suggestion made elsewhere on this list: having a GUI
installer that installs mingw-get and then runs it with some default
parameters to bridge the gap that exists from the moment the mingw-get
CLI is completed to the moment the mingw-get GUI is).

Jasper