Re: Looking into setup problems

[Brian Keener <bkeener at thesoftwaresource dot com>]

Chris,

I sincerely hope you are on vacation and not reading this until you get back 
but to carry on this discussion.

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> I hate to say this, but I have become somewhat disenchanted with this
> prev/curr/test stuff.

I never was particularly thrilled with its operation although I finally 
understood and thought we had a relatively well working version - not to say 
unchangeable however.

> How should it work if you have selected, say, Prev as the default, and
> cycle through "Reinstall".  If you have the current version of ash
> installed, what would you "re" install in this case?

I always thought of it as the left column displayed the current version and 
anything in the action column was designating what I wanted to do with the 
current.  The rules are of course different when you select Download From 
Internet but not totally once you understand the logic for the installs.  Like 
I said I envision the action as what I want to do to the left hand column which 
is the current installed version - ie: do I want to "Keep" the current, do I 
want to "Retrieve"/"Reinstall" the current, Do I want to "skip" because it is 
blank and nothing has been installed, or do I want to replace it with some 
other version which is the version I have selected in the action column.  The 
purpose of the Radio buttons was to limit what versions would appear in the 
actions column as I clicked ie: if I was on Previous radio button - only 
previous and less versions would be selectable, If current then the current and 
less (including prev) would be selectable. And if test everything was 
selectable.

> Should this install the PREVious version of ash, wiping out whatever
> version was installed?  Or, should it reinstall the currently installed
> version?

As I said above think of it in terms of what you are doing to current - the 
button only designates what version are displayed for installing over current 
(the left hand column). So in your scenario I would only be able to select from 
previous and less version in the action and the Reinstall would reinstall the 
currently installed version.  Do not confuse the left hand column current with 
current in setup.ini - they are too different entities or could be.  Setup.ini 
current is the current version whereas the left hand column is the current 
installed version.

> I got it wrong with the download options.  It should be pretty clear
> that "Retrieve" should retrieve the "Prev" version if there is one.  If
> there is no "Prev" version, should it retrieve the current version,
> though?

I disagree here - Retrieve should re-download what is in the left hand column - 
ie the current version installed.  If you want to redownload any other version 
then it's version should be displayed in the action column as I stated above.  
An added goody when downloading only would be if in the version number display 
in action when I select some other version from current would be if the version 
also showed if it already existed on disk.  As I said the radio buttons only 
designate a listing limit of what version I will see.

> I guess I'm feeling that there is too much ambiguous state in this
> field.  I tried to simplify things by collapsing everything into one
> structure and creating one variable to track the state but I think that
> there is still some tricky logic here.

Extremely tricky based on the way we had it working and utilizing the radio 
buttons.

> I think I'd like to change things so that the default prev, curr, test
> field is just became a mechanism for switching all of the fields below
> it into the specified state.  I had planned on changing this into one of
> DJ's cycleable icons so that you could switch every displayed package

I agree - I think in light of current operation it should be changed but we 
don't need another icon - just let the action do it all and remove the three 
radio buttons.  Let the action column display all versions other than what is 
currently installed and then let Reinstall/Retrieve refer to the left hand 
column which is the version currently installed.  When in download mode let the 
version display in the action column also designate if that version already 
exists on disk. In all modes lets the version display in the action column also 
designate if it is prev or test, or current if nothing is currently installed 
(ie left hand column blank.  

> I don't know how you could then force the installation of the sources of
> a "Test" version in this case, though.

Let the action show all version with added verbiage tacked on designating that 
it is the prev, curr or test or just something found on disk.  Whenever 
something like a version number or Reinstall/Retrieve is in the action column 
then the source box should be active if there is source available.  We will 
have to do away with the action for sources only and move it to the source 
checkbox - which would now have four states - na, unchecked, checked, sources 
only (which obviously changes the action designated in the action column.

Bk