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Subject: setup vs dpkg/rpm food for thought
From: Robert Collins <robert DOT collins AT itdomain DOT com DOT au>
To: cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com
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Date: 01 Nov 2001 22:24:35 +1100
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X-OriginalArrivalTime: 01 Nov 2001 11:28:50.0632 (UTC) FILETIME=[612BB480:01C162C8]

Setup.exe today has several neat capabilities:

1) change the root install on the fly. (how well does that actually
work??)
2) small, self contained.


However, 2) is a downside, because as we get smarter, better, we also
get bigger, and because we can't use external tools easily, we can't
change that.

Idea: split setup.exe, via #defines and two makefile targets.

setup-bootstrap.exe will
1) grab mirrors.lst
2) go through the standard install process - but skip the package
selection screen and only install the packages in 'Required' (which can
be called 'base').
3) launch setup.exe at the end of that.
4) setup-bootstrap.exe is never needed again.

How does this aid anything?

By tightly constrainined the requirements for setup-bootstrap we can
have an initial installer that will not get larger and bulkier as we add
features to support various packages. Any constraints we put on
ourselves will only be applicable to those base packages.

Setup.exe then has a known starting point for it's environment. It's
also _able_ to expand into things like
a) being linked to cygwin to be able to find out it's parent process
pid, and from there kill that process to allow replacing bash.exe &
cygwin1.dll.

Anyway, this is just a conceptual thing. Food for thought :}.

Rob