Re: [Opencd-devel] Installer Program Ideas

[Henrik N. O. <h....@bt...>]

On Wed, 2002-05-01 at 18:30, Alex Roston wrote:
> 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.

Totally agreed.  Can anyone do a simple proof-of-concept HTML installer?
It only needs to say hello, and let the user click on an image to launch
an installer.  Then I can put this as a zip file on org.site for
everyone to download and test.  If it works with all browsers and all
settings, then that might be the way to go.  I would certainly be the
easiest.  So the mock-up proof-of-concept version should contain a
directory stryycture, as the CD would have, 1 or 2 HTML files and 1 or 2
tiny self extracting zips or something that can be launched.  Any
takers?

> > 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."


I agree. Downloading really defeats the purpose of the CD.  'Advanced'
end users can follow a link and download an update.  The rest are very
happy to wait 3 or 6 months for a new CD.  If this is to be targeted
everywhere, including poor countries and other places with skinny pipes,
the downloading is problematic. 

- Henrik

btw: I'm preparing a newsletter for the .org site; should be up friday.

-- 

Henrik Nilsen Omma             Theoretical Physics, Oxford
35 Frenchay Road               1 Keble Road
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