On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 09:32:34AM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote: >On Jul 21 15:42, Christopher Faylor wrote: >> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 09:13:31PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote: >> >Hi, >> > >> > >> >It just occured to me what would be an IMHO really cool extension to >> >setup.exe. >> > >> >What if we could put some simple text file on cygwin.com called, say, >> >setup.rel, and setup.exe would try to fetch this file and, before >> >presenting the chooser dialog, open another dialog with a scrollable >> >text field containing the text from this release message file? Then >> >setup.exe would store a hash of the text. >> > >> >Later invocations of setup would only show the file content if the hash >> >value of the text differs from the stored hash value, which obviously >> >means the file has changed. >> > >> >This would allow us to generate arbitrary release messages for important >> >stuff. Just to give people an idea that there's some major change, for >> >instance, the jump from Cygwin 1.5.25 to 1.7.1 >> > >> >Or consider we have to rework some functionality in Cygwin 1.7 which >> >turns out to require some user intervention, for instance a >> >configuration change. >> > >> >This would not only give us a chance to deliver release messages, it >> >would also give people a chance to stop if they don't feel comfortable >> >with the described changes. Well, if they read the message at all, that >> >is. >> > >> >What do others think of that idea? >> > >> >And who volunteers to implement it? >> >> I've been thinking about adding some way of reviewing documentation from >> setup.exe, just like every other installer in the world. But, that's not >> quite what you're talking about. I think you want to display something >> before the user makes a decision. > >Yes, exactly. > >> We could add this to the setup.ini file and make it per-package so that >> caveats or announcements show up on the next screen after the packages >> are selected. > >What if upset adds the content of this setup.rel textfile to setup.ini? >In this case there's only one file to download. Setup could look for the >text and show it as I proposed. > >In the long run we could add per-package announcements as part of the >setup.hint file, just like a version dependent ldesc field.
I think we have to somehow make the announcement per-version don't we? We wouldn't want the announcement of exciting new features to be displayed when a user drops back a version. I've been talking about changing the format of setup.hint files to use a real markup language. Maybe this would be the time to do that. cgf
