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

[Charles W. <cwi...@us...>]

On 8/25/2010 10:26 AM, Keith Marshall wrote:

> The package architecture for GCC-4 is *very* different from that of GCC-3;
> specifying the GCC-4 package set in mingw.ini will serve only to break
> MinGW-5.1.6 -- utterly.  It is this lack of adaptability, and scalability,
> which led to my original decision to abandon NSIS installers forever; (the
> exercise of adding the -dev/-dll combination for mingwrt, in place of the
> older single tarball, was just too painful -- it went from a working
> MinGW-5.1.4 to a comprehensively broken 5.1.5, before eventually getting
> it right for 5.1.6.  This is an exercise in futility, which I have no
> intention of repeating.

I believe the appropriate *short term* solution is the following:

1) update the appropriate mingw32-*.xml manifest files so that the CUI 
mingw-get can be used to install gcc-4.x. and all of its new dependencies.
    a) side question: if a manifest lists two different versions of
       package foo, can I instruct mingw-get that I want version X
       instead of (possibly newer) version Y?  E.g. I want gcc-4.4.0
       (for instance) and not gcc-4.5.0-1?

2) create a very quick and dirty GUI installer whose job is as follows:
    a) install mingw-get with an appropriately configured
       /var/lib/mingw-get/data/profile.xml : use the %R shortcut so
       so that whereever the user installs mingw-get, is where
       mingw will be installed.
    b) run mingw-get with the appropriate options.

Honestly, step #1 is harder than step #2 -- and MUST happen before #2 is 
of any real use.  #2 would take me an afternoon using Inno Setup (which 
I prefer to NSIS).  But #1 is very slow going...but given all this sturm 
und drang, I suspect doing that should be a higher priority than Keith's 
and my current project of getting the rest of the msys manifests completed.

Longer term, of course, the oft-mentioned GUI front end to the mingw-get 
backend library is a better solution. But we need to get all the 
machinery -- the manifests, and library capabilities like uninstall, 
upgrade, list-uninstalled, list-installed, and the CUI front end support 
for these new features -- complete before even beginning that.

The need for this is, I believe, the reason our one volunteer for GUI 
work has so far held back.

--
Chuck