Sender: rich AT delorie DOT com
Message-ID: <38F37565.88C8ECEB@bigfoot.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 19:56:37 +0100
From: Richard Dawe <richdawe AT bigfoot DOT com>
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To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
CC: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com, Laurynas Biveinis <lauras AT softhome DOT net>,
        Zippo Workers <zippo-workers AT onelist DOT com>
Subject: Re: DJGPP library DSMs
References: <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 1000411132657 DOT 4929K-100000 AT is>
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Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com

Hello.

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Richard Dawe wrote:
[snip]
> > I imagine that the DSM will be stored on the DJGPP archive somewhere -
[snip]
> This implies that an on-line net access is imperative for this feature
> to work.  I'm afraid it might limit the users to a great degree (DOS
> machines usually don't have net access, and even Windows users only
> dial up sometimes or never).

I originally intended the group DSMs to be a quick way of installing a
whole bunch of packages when the packages had already been downloaded,
e.g. when distributed on a CD of the DJGPP archive. The networking
features of zippo probably won't be coded for a long-time yet, so we
certainly can't rely on the auto-download of packages, even with Internet
connectivity.

The question is then: what is the purpose of the group DSM? It is more a
convenience than anything else. Perhaps it would be best to link it in
with a zip-picker, so that the user would get all the required packages
for the group?

BTW since I have only a paltry dial-up link to the Internet, I'm pretty
aware of the need not to rely on constant & fast Internet connectivity. ;)

> I wonder if the problems that the group feature was designed to solve
> have a different solution, that doesn't rely on additional files.
> Perhaps we should discuss those problems on djgpp-workers.

Yes, a discussion would be welcome!

> > I suspect a solution to this problem may be to create a ZIP file
> > containing ZIP files for all the packages in the group.
> 
> That would make really large zip files which nobody will want.

Apart from newbies, perhaps, who want things to be very simple? I agree
that I might be reluctant to download a 20MB file just to get a C
development environment for DOS.

Bye,

-- 
Richard Dawe
richdawe AT bigfoot DOT com ICQ 47595498 http://www.bigfoot.com/~richdawe/