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Re: setup.exe sucks


Christopher Faylor wrote:

I'm not as concerned about the package management as I am about the
UI, actually.  If we don't have a good UI for initial install, then
the initial user experience is still going to be painful.

You may want to take a look at my pre-release RPM "distribution" I did back in July 2001. Although dated, the U/I looks like a native Win32 app; I used Tcl/Tk to write the installer logic and the GUI. IIRC, the entire installer was around 200-300 lines of Tcl. (I can post the CD .iso if you want to download it.)

FWIW, I agree with with Warren Young; the next installer should be
written in a scripting language.  Besides the source line count that
Warren mentions, the other benefit of using a scripting language is
that it allows casual programmers (i.e. those with little or no Cygwin
or Win32 programming experience under their belt) to make changes and
bugfixes easily, with little to no handholding.  A compiled program
does not provide the same benefit.

-- D.


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