kdwin-installer 0.9.0beta4 questions

[Ralf Habacker]

M. Lara schrieb:
> Hi all,
>
> I just wanted to say a great big thank you to everyone making KDE on Windows
> a reality, especially Ralf, Saro and Christian!  I'm not a programmer (I'm
> part of the "screaming users" that Saro humorously refers to in his news
> post) but I am enthused and want to help as much as I can.
>
> I do have a couple of questions about the installer: 
>
> 1 - On the Local Storage Settings screen, as an end user I have no clue
> whether I want nested directory trees for my download files or not. What are
> the advantages/disadvantages one way or the other?  Is this something that I
> have to know and choose, or can it automagically go into a directory like
> C:\Program Files\Common Files\KDE4?  If it can, I would imagine it would go
> there only when the installer can uninstall that directory as well.
>   
the nested directory structure is there for historical reasons and will 
be removed in future versions of the installer.
The local storage path should be outside of any KDE installations 
because these packages could be used to reinstall packages or install 
different versions.
Thanks for this pointer.

> 2 - Is there any particular reason I can't minimize the installer?  When it
> is downloading the necessary files off the internet (which takes a while) I
> try to minimize the installer (just to get it out of the way) and do
> something else but it won't minimize. It's not a big deal but I was just
> wondering about the reasoning.
>   
Thanks for this hint - we will add this feature to the installer.
> 3 - In the install mode when I pick the End User install mode, initially I
> was still left wondering about the compiler mode (Did I have to pick a
> compiler type anyway?  
In end user mode the used compiler is irrelevant because packages are 
available for both compiler.
> Would one type run better than the other?  
It may be usefull to choose msvc compiler because msvc packages are 
smaller, which reduces download and install time

> Did I have to have a compiler to even run the apps?).  
no
> Is there any way that when I pick an end user install mode the compiler options be grayed out or
> something? It might reduce the confusion and/or questions down the road.
>   
This is a good hint - I think i will set msvc as default in end user 
mode and disable the compiler options
> 4 - Is there a road map as to what the priorities are for the installer
> (uninstaller, add to menus, etc.?)
>   
having new features in the installer depends on people doing the coding 
stuff - planned features are (no ranking order)

package integrity check - verify md5sum of packages before installing a 
package to avoid corrupt or hacked packages.
file integrity check - verify md5sum of package files for package 
integrity checks und changed files detecting on uninstalling

start menu entry support - start menu entry should be created for each 
package on installing and removed when the related package is deinstalled

reinstall/repair function - this feature will reinstall all installed 
packages
uninstall function - uninstall all installed packages

tray icon support - let installer run in background and let it check for 
updates in background

there are already some anouncement about start menu entries and md5 sum 
support. 

If anyone like to join this project you may take a look at the sources 
at http://websvn.kde.org/kde/trunk/kdesupport/kdewin-installer/. Patches 
are welcome. It would be nice if contributors would introduce new 
features to this list before starting the implementation. This reduces 
unwanted idle power. :-)

Regards

Ralf