Re: [Opencd-devel] Installer Program Ideas

[Alex R. <tun...@pa...>]

J Aaron Farr wrote:

> 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?

Call the already written installers. Anything else is too much work, and
also assumes that we know more about the application and how it should
be installed than the people who wrote it.
 
> 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.

Agreed.

> 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.

I must confess to disliking the idea of an installer that can download
from the web. There are far too many things that could go wrong, and far
too many ways for an end user to be paranoid about such a download. I
think the best thing to do where updates are concerned is to simply find
an intelligent way to inform the end user that updates are available at
"this URL."

Just my .02


Alex