Re: [Tclish-devel] Installer modules

[Peter F. <pet...@zv...>]

Stev wrote:

> I thought I'd get the ball rolling with some organisational suggestions and a
> brief review of what we already have.
> 
> My current feeling is that we should develop at least two packages in
> addition to whatever installer applications are deemed useful.  These would
> be:
> 
> ** package installerutils, Tcl installer utilities.
>  - This would include useful routines for installation scripts on various
>    platforms.  If possible these should be abstracted away from platform
>    specifics.
> 

Yes modularity will be important. We can always bundle it up (e.g via
Tclkit) to make it simple to use. I am very keen to see abstraction
given max priority.


>  - This package should define the configuration file language/data
>    structures.

seems a reasonable way to start. 
some other possible components :

   - interface to the TEA build system 
   - de/compression utils
   - comprehensive filesystem abstraction layer ?
     - especially determing available filespace, 
       checking/setting access permissions,
       handling case-insensitive filesystems,
       handling mangled namespaces (like fat16)

   - filesystem recursers/crawlers, file search
   - file renaming (based patterns/regexps)
   - system level "config repository" abstraction layer ?  
     (for Windows Registry/Ini files, Unix system config files etc)
   - user level "config repository" abstraction layer ? 
     (Windows Registry, Unix ~/. files etc)
   - config file parsing tools & geneartion tools 
     (maybe serialization tools that feed into a DOM driven update
engine
      and then xslt files to generate the updated native file ?)
   - internationalisation support - beyond just UTF 8 capability.
   - some sort of key-variable management system that 
     is aware of relationships/dependencies between themselves
     and propagates the changes through the dependancy chain.

> 
> ** package installergui, Tk installer elements
>  - Provides a framework for a graphical installer with the standard GUI
>    elements like package selectors, directory selectors etc.
> 

installer widgets ... check 8-).  Possible including :

   - Window manager abstraction for Windoze/Mac Finder/CDE/KDE/Gnome/...
     for API to upate menus, icon bars etc, and maybe even drag & drop
support !!!
   - progress bars and other processing feedback widgets (spinners et.
al.)
   - help system framework for displaying documentation.
   - a widget for visually laying out the filesystem tree of installed
components
     that is updated as parameters are input during installation
process.
   - ???

also perhaps :

** package/file retrieval library - FTP/HTTP/WEBDAV/RSYNC/CVS?
   - probably some good packages already that just need to 
     be bundled together with some glue to create the API
   - if such a beast doesnt already exist (Perl already 
     has a good one) it can be an extension/package 
     in its own right.


> For installerutils there are already some useful routines available:
> 
> ms_shell_setup by Earl Johnson. <url: http://www.erols.com/earl-johnson/>
>  provides an interface for manipulating file associations on windows.
> 
> RegisterFileType by Kevin Kenny
>  similar to ms_shell_setup for creating associations only.
> 
> progman.tcl by me <url: http://www.shlrc.mq.edu.au/~steve/tcl/>
>  adding start menu entries via dde on windows.
> 
> tclish
>  defines a configuration file format and a collection of GUI elements based
>  on code from Effective Tcl including a configurable form displayer.  Can
>  grab packages from local directories or archives  or remote archives via
>  http.
> 
> tclxml
>  some overlap with tclish, provides another configuration file format. Can
>  extract some configuration info from TEA config files.
> 
> There are also some relevant packages that might be made use of in an
> installer application:
> 
> freewrap and/or prowrap - packaging up distributions or installers into
> single file applications.
>

I'd prefer tclkit, but I know little about freewrap - probably need to
discuss what features are needed.

> 
> tlink32 - creates shortcuts on windows
> 
> mkZiplib - a simple wrapper around the zip/unzip library, allows unpacking of
> zip files from tcl.
> 

cool. but perhaps it would be better to avoid binary components as much
as possible to maximise portability. A TCL only unzipper is possible.
Would it be viable ? - I dont know.

> I'd welcome some discussion on this partitioning of packages. If there is
> some agreement we should think about what should go into each and begin by
> collecting together what we have and filling in the blanks.
> 

not to forget tcllib 
hmm - Whats needed is a thorough survey of what TCL code is out there
before inventing our new wheels ...
Oh for "CTAN" 8-)

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