On Sun, 23 Dec 2001 06:26:29 -0000, "rvj" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> one final thought - > >if each package descriptions was separated from its respective installation >script then it provides a fairly powerful means of locating packages. As a general question for the XPInstall people. Is a script really needed for most installations? If you have a simple plugin or other addition to mozilla, why shouldn't mozilla provide all of the UI and the logic to interpret some sort of manifest file. Instead of being a declaritive format, XPInstall uses the procedural approach. This seems much more fragile than it should be. In the cases where you actually need a script (which I think would be rare), there could still be a way to reference a script. With a richer description langauge, it would be possible to inspect the description and present the information about what will be installed to the user. Also, it seems to me that this would make it much easier to add uninstall support. I was trying to write a plugin for mozilla that could be installed with a single click on the plugin place holder and a click on the confirmation security dialog. I found that the small amount of XPInstall code that I needed to write would have been much better expressed in a XML file representing the files to install. Why have code to check for errors and why force me to show a message indicating that the installation of my plugin is complete? I think XPInstall could be greatly enhanced by covering 90% of install needs with a declaritive language and the remaining 10% with the exsiting XPInstall API. Chris Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED]
