On 14 August 2011 01:49, dinkypumpkin <dinkypump...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 13/08/2011 13:22, Jon Davies wrote: >> The thing I was scratching my head about and wondering how best to >> solve was the eternal problem of updating things for windows. > > This touches on a thorny question vis-a-vis a get_iplayer Windows installer: > should it be dynamic and net-based, or standalone? As I've mentioned > elsewhere on this thread, there already is infrastructure at infradead.org > for servicing updates of get_iplayer, its dependencies, and the Windows > installer. The current installer doesn't make full use of it, but I think > I've managed to fix most of that. > [...] > The alternative is to make a get_iplayer installer more like a desktop > application installer and bundle all the dependencies, scripts, etc. in the > installer package.
dynamic vs standalone is one of those unresolvable questions - for "dumb" users standalone is convenient in that you know you're giving your users a consistent set of working software. dynamic makes it easier for users to install only those (extra) apps they need. get_iplayer has been dynamic for a while, and I don't see a good reason for change. In fact I rather like the way get_iplayer installs at the moment. mostly. (I don't see why perl isn't just another component, I can't see a good reason for it being included in the installer, given that pretty much nothing else is.) I have a objection in principle to install/update functionality that depends on the server behaving in a particular way because it ties you to servers that can be specifically configured, which rules out many hosting services - so using server-side redirects somewhat irks me. I'd prefer something that used a configuration file to work out where to find things (a bit like cygwin does) to avoid the need to update the installer every time a component is updated. >> I'm happy to help maintain the windows version (though I don't use >> get_iplayer on windows either), but can't commit a great deal of time >> to it. It might be better if I commit to maintain windows builds of >> AtomicParsley (not that it's very hard...). Platforms I *am* >> interested in maintaining are ubuntu and the d-link dns-323 NAS. > > If you want to take it over (and are planning to stick with NSIS), I'm happy > to hand off my scripts to you. I'm not sure "want" is quite the right word, but I should be able to find some time. > I'm still willing to get the next version out Please do, thanks > FWIW, I think I've automated the Windows build process > reasonably well. that's definitely a good thing. I'd been exploring automation, but mainly while trying to document what I was actually doing. the scripts were too fragile and dependent on the config of my system and it never got into a state where I could reasonably hand it on. > You hinted > that were thinking of making your own builds of dependencies, so that > feature might prove helpful if you decided to bundle everything together. Did I? Only for those dependencies for which windows builds are not readily available (which is why I built AtomicParsley). I'm lazy. If someone else is maintaining builds, and I think I can trust them, I'd rather let them do the hard work ;-) > Anyway, I should be able to get my code up on Github sometime later this > week, so you can judge for yourself. Let me know when it's there and I'll have a look. Cheers Jon _______________________________________________ get_iplayer mailing list get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer