Hi Uwe,
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Uwe Stöhr wrote:
I designed the installer to be able to have a full functional LyX.
With full functional LyX, I assume you mean "fully functional document
processing/preparation system" :-) I guess one problem is where to draw
the line - should it include drawing software for instance.
For this purpose I include all needed files from SVN's /lib directory
and this are about 20 MB (uncompressed). Then there are of course the
.exe files and the needed files from Ghostscript, ImageMagick and
Python.
...
I might be biased here, but my impression is that Windows users are quite
tolerant to downloading a huge file just to install a program.
So if I understand you correctly, the purpose of your installer is to
result in a tested LyX bundle for users that want the easy way. To be
honest, I'd probably take the easy way - I'm sick of having to re-install
Windows all the time. So the more automated it is the better...
More important is the support: ...
I think Bo was worried that having to deal with all these other packages
makes for a big work load for the developers. You seem to think the
opposite, i.e. that it's less work to bundle the packages because it
results in less questions from the user... Interesting. Guess it boils
down to who is doing the package maintenance and who answers user
questions...
Btw, I knew you have done a lot, but I hadn't thought about the scope of
it. By creating easy to use installers, there are many new users. And the
"curse" of lots of new Windows users is of course all the questions and
all the bug reports about things that aren't really LyX's fault, but
perceived as such by the user...
Another aspect is the redundancy: I'm not anymore a fan of downloading
all needed things on demand. I often had the case that one of the
FTP-servers were down or whatever and I got bug reports about this.
Just a minor thought regarding FTP-servers that are down. What would you
think about storing a copy of the packages on e.g. ftp.lyx.org?
Building an installer that only installs LyX and nothing more can easily
be done but this is no good decision.
This is probably the core question. There should probably be a minimal
LyX installer for just the executable, but in my opinion most people
wouldn't use that.
Does Joost's installer already support the option of doing a minimal
installation? If that's the case, we already have a minimal installer.
An installer is the first thing you see of a program so problems and
missing things carrys weight.
Agreed
(For example I often was asked "How can I deinstall LyX? I can't find
anything to remove it." I'm not joking but after some of these emails I
added a link to uninstall LyX in the start menu below the link to the
lyx.exe.)
I'm sorry to say that these days that's the first place I look for how to
uninstall a software... (the Windows menu for uninstalling software takes
forever to populate on my machine).
...
I'll remove my code ASAP from SVN, sorry that my doing provoke this
debate.
Unless you want to abandon your installer, I think removing it from SVN is
premature. You've stated that you are willing to do it, so why not see if
we can't work out something that makes everybody happy.
For instance, moving to another part of the repository seems like it'd
satisfy Bo.
Speaking of that. Have you thought anything on the release plan for a
complete installer? If for instance IM do a new release (with important
bug fixes), would you then say that there should also be a new release of
the complete installer?
Best regards
/Christian
--
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44 http://www.md.kth.se/~chr
