Re: [Opencd-devel] regarding installation method

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

Buchan Milne wrote:

> Brendon Crawford wrote:
> | I think we should have ONE installation program which
> | encompasses all the programs. This will allow you to
> | decide which programs you want to install. Then within
> | each program section you can decide which features to
> | install.

> Seems like too much work for too little gain, IMHO. It might be possible
> to select the apps, and have the autorun app launch each of the
> installers in sequence.

This makes more sense to me. As I recall, most good programming
languages have the ability to call and run another program. We'll
certainly have the ability to use or make a temp directory on the C
drive for any interpreters we use (if we use them.) 

> | 2) Internet Explorer allows for ActiveX Scripting
> | (security alert!!), of which can easily be used to
> | create a nice interface with an easy to use installer.
> | However, this is deopendent on a proproetary system in
> | a way.
> |
> 
> Running IE from the CD or the target machine? I don't think relying on
> the IE installed is a good idea .... Plus using proprietary software to
> deliver the installer doesn't seem to kosher ...

Yeah, that gives Microsoft a lot of power. Imagine the next update to
IE...
 
> | 3) We could create a JAVA/swing based installation.
> | This could be very convenienet seeing that it would be
> | cross platform. This idea is my personal favorite,
> | seing that it would be the most flexible.
> |
> Can the JRE be run from a CD? Or would it need to be installed first?

We could certainly put it in C:\temp.

> | 5) We could do a HTML based installation, of which
> | will then send the information to a backend PHP or
> | PERL installer via a miniture portable local web server.

> I don't know how you are going to configure your web server on the fly
> to take into account different drive letters.

Yeah, now we've got to install a web server first... That sounds a
little clunky. As to getting the drive letter of the CD, Windows should
have that in memory somewhere - if "MY COMPUTER" can find it, we should
be able to as well.
 
IMHO, if we decide to include compilers/interpreters on the CD, we
should write the install program in one of the languages we install and
include the source. We should be able to find (or wrap) everything we're
going to install in a self extracting .exe file, which usually invokes
the installer.

After the endures had picked the programs they wanted to install, our
installer would do something like this:


QUERIES WINDOWS FOR CD DRIVE LETTER AND PUTS IT IN VARIABLE
$Drive_letter

	# The installer learns that the CD drive is "F" on this machine

	# The installer goes through a list of variables:

IF $Mozilla="yes" THEN CALL $Drive_letter:\Mozilla\Mozilla.exe
	# Mozilla.exe runs, extracts the archive, and installs Mozilla

IF $XBasic="yes" THEN CALL $Drive_letter:\Xbasic\Xbasic.exe
	#In this case $XBasic="no" so the installer goes onto the next thing.

Unfortunately the only language I'm competent to code such a thing in is
and old BASIC language called ASIC... Oh the joys of being ten years
behind.

Alex