> On Oct 1, 2015, at 5:46 AM, Eric Auer <e.a...@jpberlin.de> wrote: > > > Hi Jerome, thanks for your work on your installer :-)
Welcome. :^) > >> 1) boots from floppy or floppy image (like boot CD) >> >> (Note: if user manually lauches installer, skip 2 and goto 3) >> >> 2) Detects if latest FreeDOS version is installed (actual test not >> written) If it is the latest version, returns to prompt with welcome >> message. If not installer continues. > > You have to skip this: After booting from the floppy or > CD, you always run the DOS from there, so the answer to > this question always is the same. Plus you say that you > skip step 2 if the installer is manually launched from > an existing DOS install. At present, this is skipped. However, when written will probably use something like and test for ID file and it’s version. Something like: C:\FDOS\VERSION.FDI = 1.2, otherwise continue. > >> 3) Welcomes user to installer and asks if the want to continue. If >> no, returns to prompt with install aborted message. > > I would ask that later… Basically, this is just the welcome to the installer screen. > >> 4) Checks for drive C’s existence. If it exists, skip to 7. > > If you booted the installer from USB, C: might be the USB. > It may be better to let the user select other targets here. It is possible that C can be a USB stick or something else. The Default "Quick and Friendly” version will NOT offer a list of drive targets. However, it may make it into the advanced mode at some point. > >> 5) Informs user they need to partition and offers to run >> partitioner. if yes, runs fdisk. If no, returns to prompt >> with abort message. > > Too dangerous. Only offer automatic partition / format after > making 100% sure that the main disk (BIOS drive 0x80) neither > has MBR nor GPT partitions at all yet. Otherwise, drop the > user to a prompt and suggest that they use tools in their > other operating systems to shrink existing partitions and > make a FAT32 partition for DOS. Tell them that, at the cost > of losing their existing data, they could also use DOS fdisk > and format for that. I put a lot of though into this aspect of the installer and would have to disagree a little with you here. First, I feel that a completely automatic method of partitioning you drives is extremely dangerous. What to keep, what to destroy. I cringe at the thought of that. Go take a a peek at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_type and then tell me you want to deal with it automatically. :) I think for the most part, there will be 3 types of installs. 1) Single OS, Virtual Machine. 2) Possible single OS, Hobby machines. 3) Dedicated systems. I don’t think that doing Multi-boot with Windows 10 is as likely as it used to be. For the most part, those would be people who want to run older DOS games. They would probably either use a full VM with FreeDOS or plain old DOSBox. > >> 6) Partitioner runs, then asked user to reboot. if yes, reboots >> if no, returns to prompt with abort message. 7) Checks if C is >> formatted. if yes, skip to 9. 8) offers to format or exit to >> prompt. > > See above. There really isn’t a good way to determine if what DOS sees as drive C is the first BIOS HDD. This is the reason I dropped development of the CheckHDD utility. Let’s take the rare Multi-Boot scenario. Using Grub, Lilo or other boot loader: BIOS drive 0x80, has windows ntfs and an extended linux, swap and fat 32 partition. BIOS drive 0x81, has freedos and extended fat 32 partition. FreeDOS will assign the drives like this: BIOS 0x80, ??, ??, ?? and D: BIOS 0x81, C: and E: Drive C: is on 0x81 and is perfectly fine. So, drive 0x81 partition 0 needs formatted for dos. But, this all goes away if you just ask DOS, hey is C: formatted. > >> ——— to do ——— >> >> 9) Offer backup. > > Allow the user to select a target drive and directory, not > necessarily C: and FDOS (or FREEDOS?). Check if the target > exists. If no, make directory. If yes, check if it already > uses LSM to track installed packages. If yes, do smoother > upgrade by upgrading installed packages and adding those > which were not yet installed. If no, ask if old directory > should be just overwritten or moved away before backup. In > all cases, if user opts for backup, offer either renaming > or zipping of the directory, with file-name-anti-collider. No target folder’s will be offered in the “Quick and Easy” version. Maybe, they will make it into the advanced mode. The architecture of the new installer won’t care what scheme of package management is used by the Release. The “Quick and Easy” version will not offer types of backups or id it should overwrite the old files. It will simple move the conflicting FDOS directory to FDOS????.OLD. The “Advanced” mode will offer renaming, zipping or overwritten. > >> 10) install. > > Give a choice of BASE (explain that this is all that you > need for standard DOS and that you can always install more > packages with FDNPKG later) and FULL (explain that this is > 100s of megabytes) install here :-) Of course. I was getting lazy on typing about the future. :) > >> If user manually launches with "SETUP.BAT adv”, the installer >> will run in advanced mode. > > To be specified what that does? Provides more detailed options and a different color scheme. > >> Also, at any choice box, if the User presses CTRL-C, they are >> provided with choices to either quit to DOS, go back to where >> they were or switch to and from Advanced Mode. > > On pressing CTRL-C, I expect to quit to DOS. I would not expect > this to be a magic trick to enter advanced mode. I do expect to > have the option to press ESC to go back from a choice situation. Jim wants no visual notice that there is an advanced mode for the installer. The CTRL-C magic trick is only a way to provide a power user with foreknowledge of the trick to switch to advanced mode at any point in the installer without exiting and restarting it. Walking forward and backward through the installer isn’t possible. (YET!) That functionality won’t be available until I add “Hot Key” support to V8Power Tools. > > Note that it would be nice to have choices grouped on screens, > at least I prefer to see what is coming to me instead of getting > one question at a time, never knowing what will happen next ;-) At some point, I will probably make a vchkbx utility that will allow for multiple selections check boxes at one time. However, restricting V8PT to use no TSRs, RAM or DISK Storage and still run as little utilities to extend batch files, doing multiple things on the same screen is not a viable option. I have thought of ways around this problem. However, they either require some sort of storage or break the vchoice, vecho… utility extension metaphor. > > Cheers, Eric > ;^) > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
