Re: installer improvements
Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E] wrote: http://cygwin.com/mirrors.html gives locations. Doesn't solve the problem entirely. Location isn't the only issue, despite what estate agents will tell you. There seem to often be problems with the switch.ch mirror for example, even though it is probably the closest to me (of course, if I were closer to a border it might be a French, German, or Italian server, who knows). I'm not sure I want to wait for pings off all the mirror servers, either. But, since the website already knows where the mirrors are, and since the installing computer possibly knows where *it* is (hell, you could always ask the user, the first time)... Anyway, what I'd really like to know is, manually parsing the setup.ini aside, is there any way to uninstall (say) Cygwin/X all in one blow? I spent what felt like hours last night clicking through various packages to uninstall, only for some later package, when cycled through reinstall on the way to uninstall, to reset it. I considered taking a hammer to it, but didn't want to disturb the neighbours at such a late hour. Now *that* would be an improvement to setup I could get fully behind (a way of seeing and uninstalling not only package A, but all dependant packages as well, not using a hamme on the computer). -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: installer improvements
On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 12:16:42PM +0200, Gary . wrote: Anyway, what I'd really like to know is, manually parsing the setup.ini aside, is there any way to uninstall (say) Cygwin/X all in one blow? I spent what felt like hours last night clicking through various packages to uninstall, only for some later package, when cycled through reinstall on the way to uninstall, to reset it. I considered taking a hammer to it, but didn't want to disturb the neighbours at such a late hour. Now *that* would be an improvement to setup I could get fully behind (a way of seeing and uninstalling not only package A, but all dependant packages as well, not using a hamme on the computer). I'd suggest that if you have a question or comment about setup it would be a good idea to send a message with a specific subject rather than trying to use this thread. I just happened to read this because I recognized your name as a non-kook. If the other setup.exe maintainers are at all similar to me they have given up on this particular thread a while ago. cgf -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: installer improvements
On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Christopher Faylor wrote: On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 12:16:42PM +0200, Gary . wrote: Anyway, what I'd really like to know is ... I'd suggest that if you have a question or comment about setup it would be a good idea to send a message with a specific subject rather than trying to use this thread. Well, to be honest, I think how setup could be improved is a worthwhile discussion. Setup is the second thing new users see, after the website, after all. Anyway, I will start a new thread for my uninstall question. I recognized your name as a non-kook. Urk. Are you sure? -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: installer improvements
On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 08:40:38PM +0200, Gary . wrote: On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Christopher Faylor wrote: I recognized your name as a non-kook. Urk. Are you sure? Sorry. I must be tired. I let a non-WJM comment sneak by. cgf -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: installer improvements
Tim McDaniel t...@panix.com writes: I then clicked on qt3-doc's New value repeatedly to reach Uninstall, but on the first click (Reinstall, I think), setup.exe put qt3 back to being installed. It's this same cycling-activates-dependencies problem that makes it impossible to remove all X Windows-related packages once any one of them is installed. The relationships between all the font, graphics, and sound packages is mystifying. I don't want to use any of them, but I can't seem to get rid of them. On several occasions I've spent about an hour trying again and again to request that they all be removed, but there's always one that's a dependency of something else installed, and if you dare accidentally cycle through the Skip/Keep/Install/Remove choice one step too far, the house of cards tumbles down again. -- Steven E. Harris -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: installer improvements
On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 7:29 PM, Morgan Gangwere 0.fracta...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:10 AM, wefwef wefwef fromble...@gmail.com wrote: After using cygwin for years, and having some recent difficulty installing, I took a look at the installer to actually try and understand it (a novel concept I know!). Your problem was that a package didnt get installed because you would have had to explicitly told it not to have been. Nice explanation if it was actually true, but it's just an assumption you have made, based on your opinion that the cygwin installer is flawless. Here are my thoughts on the gui - I think it could be made considerably more user friendly with some minor cosmetic changes. Personally, as a UI fanatic, I have no problem with it, and I get really nitpicky about design. Lets hear your gripes, shall we? :) The View button is being used to do two separate and unrelated tasks. - Switch between category and list view - Choose between partial, up to date, and not installed. I suggest that additional radio buttons be used to select between category and list view. They are *not* unrelated. In fact, that button keeps me *sane* how do you choose full view in category mode, full view in list mode, partial view in category mode, partial view in list mode, not installed in category mode, not installed in list mode ? they dont exist because packages can exist in multiple categories (apache in web and network, xbiff in X11 and Network, etc) nope, that doesn't explain anything. So what if they can exist in multiple categories. Obviously if I choose a list view, then I want a list of everything that has been chosen, with no duplicates. And a category view would obviously show the duplicates within the categories. What it does is change the perspective of looking at the packages; the fact that one view happens to be a tree view (by category) instead of a linear-list (by is-installed or is-downloaded) is a happy 2nd or 3rd order effect. *any other way of doing it would be a kludgy look*. So you are saying that the single button has a second order effect. Normally, you would put this 'second order effect' on a different gui component so it could be controlled separately. In effect, the view button tries to do two things - one is how you see what is currently selected (list or category), the other is to select what you see. Why on earth you would want to choose these functions with the same button I don't know. no, the second order effect is that in category view, it is set up in a tree-list instead of (oh i dont know) sorted by the category in a column. There you go again, a 'second order effect' - So you admit that one button does two separate things, and you think that's ok, and is the best way to do things, and doesn't confuse anyone at all? The terms used are not the clearest (and believe me, things are tricky enough already) Partial - I suggest change to 'to be be installed' or similar Up to date - I suggest change to 'already installed' or similar not installed - this is clear, no changes necessary Partial: Downloaded (or marked for download/Updatable), but not installed. Up To Date: Downloaded, Installed and latest version. Not Installed: Self Referential. Yes, I know you can explain the terms to me, good design however is self explanatory. The way that (partial, up to date and not installed) is selected, via clicking on a button multiple times is not very common in gui design. It sure as hell is. Look at Synaptic: Uses the same ideology; If the debian folks were braindamaged (which, frankly, some of them are) they would be working on GNOME projects (Except Synaptic, which also has this ability) Where else? - I don't see it everywhere in all the gui's I use - I do however see radio buttons and drop down lists everywhere. I'll point to Microsoft's Visual Studio installers of past. I dont have the RC for vs2010 but I can speculate its the same as most of the other ones: a button to change one things, another button to change something else, and more buttons to change how you see things. AVR Studio uses view-modes as well, changing the entire layout of the application depending on what you are doing at the moment (be it flashing a device, debugging a device, etc) It doesn't allow you to see all of the available choices at once. I suggest replacing this button either with a group of radio buttons, or a drop down list similar to the way that you can change the view in a windows folder (details, list, icons). I believe the view-mode you're looking for is full No, I'm looking for a logical way of selecting the view mode. I believe you are looking for the view button then. No, because the view button is a confused hack of a way to select both what I want to view, and how I want to view it. If you cared about gui design as you claim to, then you would realize that this is a
RE: installer improvements
wefwef wefwef sent the following at Wednesday, April 07, 2010 8:18 AM On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 7:29 PM, Morgan Gangwere On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:10 AM, wefwef wefwef wrote: Choosing the fastest server could save a lot longer than 45 seconds in download time. This functionality would be useful and could be an option available to users if they wanted to automatically find the fastest server. Ever wondered why there's 50 or so servers to choose from? because it assumes that when you choose you are able to figure out that its probably faster to get data from somewhere closer to you. There are 94 servers on the list many of which don't have any obvious geographic location (e.g. mirrors.dotsrc.org). There are 195 countries in the world. That means an awful lot of people have to be an expert on the geography of a foreign country in order to choose the correct server. Well, I'm sure they can work it out - but wouldn't it be nice to give them the choice to get the computer to work it out for them? http://cygwin.com/mirrors.html gives locations. - Barry Disclaimer: Statements made herein are not made on behalf of NIAID. -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: installer improvements
On 4/7/2010 8:32 AM, Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E] wrote: wefwef wefwef sent the following at Wednesday, April 07, 2010 8:18 AM There are 94 servers on the list many of which don't have any obvious geographic location (e.g. mirrors.dotsrc.org). There are 195 countries in the world. That means an awful lot of people have to be an expert on the geography of a foreign country in order to choose the correct server. Well, I'm sure they can work it out - but wouldn't it be nice to give them the choice to get the computer to work it out for them? http://cygwin.com/mirrors.html gives locations. As tiresome as this conversation is becoming, there is just no way a simple user is going to first of all know to look at that location and secondly spend the time to read it all while comparing with the mirror list provided by setup.exe. *Maybe* if the mirror panel in setup mentioned that URL some users might look; otherwise, the mirrors.html page may as well not exist for them. What's being requested here is simply a button on the mirror selection page which, when pressed, runs some sort of a ping test for each mirror and reports the results. Maybe the mirror list could be sorted from fastest to slowest after the test completes, or a ping time column could be added to the display. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to provide a clue and a starting point for new users to select their first mirror. All that said, the tone of the requester is not helping the setup maintainer or the rest of the list really sympathize with his position. His points wouldn't be so bad if he merely asked for features and improvements rather than demand them and belittle the maintainers when they disagree. Of course, his ideas might be accepted even quicker if they were presented as patches. Cygwin is a volunteer effort after all. -Jeremy -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: installer improvements
All that said, the tone of the requester is not helping the setup maintainer or the rest of the list really sympathize with his position. His points wouldn't be so bad if he merely asked for features and improvements rather than demand them and belittle the maintainers when they disagree. Of course, his ideas might be accepted even quicker if they were presented as patches. Cygwin is a volunteer effort after all. Jeremy, I've merely made some suggestions, I certainly didn't or didn't intend to demand anything. The responses to my suggestions did not appear to be based on their merit, rather on the fact that I made them, and I replied in the same tone that the suggestions were met with. Chris -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: installer improvements
On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 05:31:47PM +0300, wefwef wefwef wrote: On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 09:01:58AM -0500, Jeremy Bopp wrote: All that said, the tone of the requester is not helping the setup maintainer or the rest of the list really sympathize with his position. ?His points wouldn't be so bad if he merely asked for features and improvements rather than demand them and belittle the maintainers when they disagree. ?Of course, his ideas might be accepted even quicker if they were presented as patches. ?Cygwin is a volunteer effort after all. Jeremy, I've merely made some suggestions, I certainly didn't or didn't intend to demand anything. The responses to my suggestions did not appear to be based on their merit, rather on the fact that I made them, and I replied in the same tone that the suggestions were met with. Attempts at revisionist history aside, if you'd care to offer patches to setup they would be objectively considered. cgf -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
[OT] Re: installer improvements
On 07/04/2010 13:18, wefwef wefwef wrote: On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 7:29 PM, Morgan Gangwere wrote: On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:10 AM, wefwef wefwef wrote: After using cygwin for years, and having some recent difficulty installing, I took a look at the installer to actually try and understand it (a novel concept I know!). Your problem was that a package didnt get installed because you would have had to explicitly told it not to have been. Nice expla[KERSNIPFLUSHSPLAT] Since this debate is heading OT, I posted my response to the -talk list: http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-talk/2010-q2/msg2.html cheers, DaveK -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: installer improvements
On 4/5/2010 3:47 AM, wefwef wefwef wrote: After using cygwin for years, and having some recent difficulty installing, I took a look at the installer to actually try and understand it (a novel concept I know!). Here are my thoughts on the gui - I think it could be made considerably more user friendly with some minor cosmetic changes. Personally, as a UI fanatic, I have no problem with it, and I get really nitpicky about design. Lets hear your gripes, shall we? :) The View button is being used to do two separate and unrelated tasks. - Switch between category and list view - Choose between partial, up to date, and not installed. I suggest that additional radio buttons be used to select between category and list view. They are *not* unrelated. In fact, that button keeps me *sane* What it does is change the perspective of looking at the packages; the fact that one view happens to be a tree view (by category) instead of a linear-list (by is-installed or is-downloaded) is a happy 2nd or 3rd order effect. *any other way of doing it would be a kludgy look*. The terms used are not the clearest (and believe me, things are tricky enough already) Partial - I suggest change to 'to be be installed' or similar Up to date- I suggest change to 'already installed' or similar not installed - this is clear, no changes necessary Partial: Downloaded (or marked for download/Updatable), but not installed. Up To Date: Downloaded, Installed and latest version. Not Installed: Self Referential. The way that (partial, up to date and not installed) is selected, via clicking on a button multiple times is not very common in gui design. It sure as hell is. Look at Synaptic: Uses the same ideology; If the debian folks were braindamaged (which, frankly, some of them are) they would be working on GNOME projects (Except Synaptic, which also has this ability) It doesn't allow you to see all of the available choices at once. I suggest replacing this button either with a group of radio buttons, or a drop down list similar to the way that you can change the view in a windows folder (details, list, icons). I believe the view-mode you're looking for is full I suggest that a new column be introduced, indicating whether a package is already installed or not. The installer has this information - it would be nice if it made it available to the user. There's already two of those -- they're called Bin? and Src? -- which indicate if the binary and/or source packages are installed. Also, on an unrelated note, it would be very nice, to sort the list of mirrors in order of latency, or auto select the fastest available mirror. Lets see, the server list contains 30-50 servers. Setup.exe is single-threaded for a reason until you get to the installation, where upon it actually forks off some threads to do real work. Lets assume that you're not on the greatest of net connections... say average ping of 180ms (thats my average ping to the local transfer station)... 5 [pings] * 180 [~ms] *50 [servers] = 45000 ms thats 45 seconds your machine is *stopped* going and checking latency. Inb4 make the main server report them -- not a good idea. First, the main server's going to be right on the backbone, therefore giving *low* pings. This will create a false sense of hope and when it takes forever for it down download even though the ping was low, users get grumpy. Inb4 Have a round-robin DNS -- Again, not a good idea. Each server has a *different* set of packages because some of them are purely *volunteer* maintained. Its just a sad fact that most (if not all) of the people who work on these projects make... $0 maintaining the servers, packages and tools. AS for gripes about the deterministic-y of the installer: its entirely deterministic. What you do, however, is not. If you notice, there are three options in the installer for setup mode -- one is normal install off the net, another is download packages only, and the third is install from local cache. The download packages only will churn whatever portion of a package tree you wish down into a filesystem *locked to a particular server*. that is, if you choose C:\Cygtemp\ as your download directory you will find that there's a folder there for the URL of your chosen mirror. This lets you back up an entire server then turn around and install it on a network-less machine (by pointing it to cygtemp's logical new location) Give You A Hint, I at the age of *13* was able to download and install and configure Cygwin... 1.3 I think it was... It was definitely about five years ago... onto a machine with no internet connection whatsoever. -- Morgan Gangwere Why? Because it breaks the logical flow of conversation, plus makes messages unreadable. Top-Posting is evil. -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation:
Re: installer improvements
After using cygwin for years, and having some recent difficulty installing, I took a look at the installer to actually try and understand it (a novel concept I know!). Here are my thoughts on the gui - I think it could be made considerably more user friendly with some minor cosmetic changes. Personally, as a UI fanatic, I have no problem with it, and I get really nitpicky about design. Lets hear your gripes, shall we? :) The View button is being used to do two separate and unrelated tasks. - Switch between category and list view - Choose between partial, up to date, and not installed. I suggest that additional radio buttons be used to select between category and list view. They are *not* unrelated. In fact, that button keeps me *sane* how do you choose full view in category mode, full view in list mode, partial view in category mode, partial view in list mode, not installed in category mode, not installed in list mode ? What it does is change the perspective of looking at the packages; the fact that one view happens to be a tree view (by category) instead of a linear-list (by is-installed or is-downloaded) is a happy 2nd or 3rd order effect. *any other way of doing it would be a kludgy look*. So you are saying that the single button has a second order effect. Normally, you would put this 'second order effect' on a different gui component so it could be controlled separately. In effect, the view button tries to do two things - one is how you see what is currently selected (list or category), the other is to select what you see. Why on earth you would want to choose these functions with the same button I don't know. The terms used are not the clearest (and believe me, things are tricky enough already) Partial - I suggest change to 'to be be installed' or similar Up to date - I suggest change to 'already installed' or similar not installed - this is clear, no changes necessary Partial: Downloaded (or marked for download/Updatable), but not installed. Up To Date: Downloaded, Installed and latest version. Not Installed: Self Referential. Yes, I know you can explain the terms to me, good design however is self explanatory. The way that (partial, up to date and not installed) is selected, via clicking on a button multiple times is not very common in gui design. It sure as hell is. Look at Synaptic: Uses the same ideology; If the debian folks were braindamaged (which, frankly, some of them are) they would be working on GNOME projects (Except Synaptic, which also has this ability) Where else? - I don't see it everywhere in all the gui's I use - I do however see radio buttons and drop down lists everywhere. It doesn't allow you to see all of the available choices at once. I suggest replacing this button either with a group of radio buttons, or a drop down list similar to the way that you can change the view in a windows folder (details, list, icons). I believe the view-mode you're looking for is full No, I'm looking for a logical way of selecting the view mode. I suggest that a new column be introduced, indicating whether a package is already installed or not. The installer has this information - it would be nice if it made it available to the user. There's already two of those -- they're called Bin? and Src? -- which indicate if the binary and/or source packages are installed. Well, actually the column that does this is called Current, which was pointed out to me by Dave Korn. Also, on an unrelated note, it would be very nice, to sort the list of mirrors in order of latency, or auto select the fastest available mirror. Lets see, the server list contains 30-50 servers. Setup.exe is single-threaded for a reason until you get to the installation, where upon it actually forks off some threads to do real work. Lets assume that you're not on the greatest of net connections... say average ping of 180ms (thats my average ping to the local transfer station)... 5 [pings] * 180 [~ms] *50 [servers] = 45000 ms thats 45 seconds your machine is *stopped* going and checking latency. Choosing the fastest server could save a lot longer than 45 seconds in download time. This functionality would be useful and could be an option available to users if they wanted to automatically find the fastest server. Inb4 make the main server report them -- not a good idea. First, the main server's going to be right on the backbone, therefore giving *low* pings. This will create a false sense of hope and when it takes forever for it down download even though the ping was low, users get grumpy. Inb4 Have a round-robin DNS -- Again, not a good idea. Each server has a *different* set of packages because some of them are purely *volunteer* maintained. Its just a sad fact that most (if not all) of the people who work on these projects make... $0 maintaining the servers, packages and tools. AS for gripes about the deterministic-y of the
Re: installer improvements
On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:10 AM, wefwef wefwef fromble...@gmail.com wrote: After using cygwin for years, and having some recent difficulty installing, I took a look at the installer to actually try and understand it (a novel concept I know!). Your problem was that a package didnt get installed because you would have had to explicitly told it not to have been. Here are my thoughts on the gui - I think it could be made considerably more user friendly with some minor cosmetic changes. Personally, as a UI fanatic, I have no problem with it, and I get really nitpicky about design. Lets hear your gripes, shall we? :) The View button is being used to do two separate and unrelated tasks. - Switch between category and list view - Choose between partial, up to date, and not installed. I suggest that additional radio buttons be used to select between category and list view. They are *not* unrelated. In fact, that button keeps me *sane* how do you choose full view in category mode, full view in list mode, partial view in category mode, partial view in list mode, not installed in category mode, not installed in list mode ? they dont exist because packages can exist in multiple categories (apache in web and network, xbiff in X11 and Network, etc) What it does is change the perspective of looking at the packages; the fact that one view happens to be a tree view (by category) instead of a linear-list (by is-installed or is-downloaded) is a happy 2nd or 3rd order effect. *any other way of doing it would be a kludgy look*. So you are saying that the single button has a second order effect. Normally, you would put this 'second order effect' on a different gui component so it could be controlled separately. In effect, the view button tries to do two things - one is how you see what is currently selected (list or category), the other is to select what you see. Why on earth you would want to choose these functions with the same button I don't know. no, the second order effect is that in category view, it is set up in a tree-list instead of (oh i dont know) sorted by the category in a column. The terms used are not the clearest (and believe me, things are tricky enough already) Partial - I suggest change to 'to be be installed' or similar Up to date - I suggest change to 'already installed' or similar not installed - this is clear, no changes necessary Partial: Downloaded (or marked for download/Updatable), but not installed. Up To Date: Downloaded, Installed and latest version. Not Installed: Self Referential. Yes, I know you can explain the terms to me, good design however is self explanatory. The way that (partial, up to date and not installed) is selected, via clicking on a button multiple times is not very common in gui design. It sure as hell is. Look at Synaptic: Uses the same ideology; If the debian folks were braindamaged (which, frankly, some of them are) they would be working on GNOME projects (Except Synaptic, which also has this ability) Where else? - I don't see it everywhere in all the gui's I use - I do however see radio buttons and drop down lists everywhere. I'll point to Microsoft's Visual Studio installers of past. I dont have the RC for vs2010 but I can speculate its the same as most of the other ones: a button to change one things, another button to change something else, and more buttons to change how you see things. AVR Studio uses view-modes as well, changing the entire layout of the application depending on what you are doing at the moment (be it flashing a device, debugging a device, etc) It doesn't allow you to see all of the available choices at once. I suggest replacing this button either with a group of radio buttons, or a drop down list similar to the way that you can change the view in a windows folder (details, list, icons). I believe the view-mode you're looking for is full No, I'm looking for a logical way of selecting the view mode. I believe you are looking for the view button then. I suggest that a new column be introduced, indicating whether a package is already installed or not. The installer has this information - it would be nice if it made it available to the user. There's already two of those -- they're called Bin? and Src? -- which indicate if the binary and/or source packages are installed. Well, actually the column that does this is called Current, which was pointed out to me by Dave Korn. I suggest that a new column be introduced, indicating whether a package is already installed or not. Sounds to me like a boolean. Bin? and Src? do that. Choosing the fastest server could save a lot longer than 45 seconds in download time. This functionality would be useful and could be an option available to users if they wanted to automatically find the fastest server. Ever wondered why there's 50 or so servers to choose from? because it assumes that when you choose you are
Re: installer improvements
On Tue, Apr 06, 2010 at 10:29:15AM -0600, Morgan Gangwere wrote: Stop trying to fix the interface unless you are volunteering to take over the project. That's a little harsh. We'll gladly look at patches which improve setup.exe but it's not likely that we'll be interested in making interface changes just because someone makes assertive statements about the UI. cgf -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: installer improvements
On Tue, 6 Apr 2010, Christopher Faylor wrote: That's a little harsh. We'll gladly look at patches which improve setup.exe but it's not likely that we'll be interested in making interface changes just because someone makes assertive statements about the UI. Hrm. Can I nevertheless put in a comment? Yesterday, as I mentioned on this list, I was fooling around with packages qt3 and qt3-doc. In setup.exe, at one point, I clicked on qt3 until it was Skip. I then clicked on qt3-doc's New value repeatedly to reach Uninstall, but on the first click (Reinstall, I think), setup.exe put qt3 back to being installed. The only reason I noticed is because there's only one row between them. If the dependency were off in lib*, for example, I would have been thwarted. So two thoughts come to my mind. (1) Why do the docs depend on the package? While it's unlikely, it's possible that someone wants the documentation to be handy on their own machine (convenient access, for example) when the real package is installed on another. For a similar example, I tend to do BAT file work on a production machine, but my browser and bookmarked help links are on my desktop. (2) I was annoyed that it silently included a package, and more, that it silently undid an action. I'm not entirely sure of what the best fix would be. Maybe if, when clicking Next, it would pop up a dialog box listing unmet dependencies and ask whether they should be included? -- Tim McDaniel, t...@panix.com -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
