Re: [Opencd-devel] Installer Program Ideas

[J A. F. <jaa...@ya...>]

[snip]
--- Fireklar <fir...@ho...> wrote:
Possibly Horrible Idea:
Installer program that works either from a CD or just by itself. When included
on the CD, it would be able to install from the CD, any of the software,
optionally, software not included on the CD could be downloaded and installed
by the installer. When not on a CD, it would be able to just download and
install from the internet.
[/snip]

This is similar to Cygwin's "setup.exe" installer that is also used for XEmacs
for Win32.  I haven't been able to find cygwin's source, but I did look at the
xemacs installer a bit.  The only trick I see is that the cygwin installer
expects everything in a tar.bz zipped file (I think, or something like that at
least).  Not all the applications we're considering are distributed this way
and there are other issues too.  However, I think that if we want to develop
some sort of installer that can install from either CD or Internet and
potentially handle future updates too, then I think we should look at the
cygwin installer, if only as an example.

On the other hand, many of the applications under consideration have excellent
installers already developed.  Do we really want to throw these out and start
from scratch?  Mozilla and OpenOffice have very nice installers for example. 
Should our installer then simply call these installers, or should we have one
unified installer?

I think it would be beneficial if we could discuss and set down the "design
goals" of the installer itself since it will have a significant influence on
how the project is set up and distributed.  Several ideas have been suggested
including an HTML based installer, a nice solid graphic installer, and an
installer that can also download from the web and/or do future updates.  All
these ideas have definite pros and cons. Perhaps we need to look at what
features are most important and move from there.  (If this has already been
discussed somewhere, please let me know.)

jaaron

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