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Re: MSI Cygwin installer


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tristan Juricek" <Tjuricek@mohomine.com>

Hi,
  I'm the cygwin setup.exe maintainer.

> I've been wondering if anyone has considered or has worked on a Cygwin
MSI
> installer.  Though there are some restrictions and it may be more
difficult
> to automate, the administrative capabilities more than make up for it
(at
> least for my tasks).  I'm going ahead and wrapping the installers
myself for
> our internal usage, but I'd also like to gauge interest in developing
an
> MSI-based installation system.

Little from me here. I considered it quite seriously until I'd had a
good hard look at it. Until the ORCA database format is reverse
engineered and a [L]GPL support library created, I don't want to do
anything with MSI's with Cygwin.

Once thats done however, I'm open to discussing it.

> Right now, for my company's internal installer, I've moved to the
following
> setup:
> 1. Each tarfile that comprises part of the distribution gets
repackaged into
> a merge module (msm).
> 2. There is an msi installer for each one of the "logical" groupings
of
> packages - base, devel, admin, archive, etc.
> 3. There is a final single msi installer that calls the logical group
> installers via an embedded custom action.

How do you run the post-install and pre-removal scripts for each
package?

> This setup allows for the ability to patch in new versions of the
different
> tools quickly.  However, you still need to have the set of available
tools
> compiled into the installer itself - I don't know if it's even
possible to
> add components and features while attempting an installation.

Yes it is via patch msi's that update an existing product. Get the MSI
2.0 SDK for this feature (Watch out: MS have 1.5 beta stuff floating
around on their website as well as 2.0).

Rob


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