Setup.exe thoughts and queries

[Cliff Hones]

I have a problem with the new setup.  Its current behaviour
in "download from internet" mode is non-intuitive (for me).
I can't report it as a bug, as I've not seen its intended
action documented in enough detail anywhere, so this is
likely cockpit error.

[And don't take that as a criticism; I know the setup work
is ongoing and the time needed to write a user guide hasn't
yet been found by anyone.]

My expectation was that the "download from internet" mode
would be totally independent of any current Cygwin installation
on the machine doing the download.  This would make it ideal
for downloading for later installation to multiple machines,
and for enabling a damaged installation to be easily wiped and
reinstalled from scratch.  I assumed that all the info on
the download, including mirror(s) chosen, proxy setting,
and package selection, would be held in the downloaded
directory structure, and that when re-run setup would
determine which packages were up to date, and which had
newer downloads available.

Indeed, I envisaged that it would be reasonable to have
more than one "local download directory" on a given machine -
eg so one could be kept as a fully-tested baseline, and one
could include experimental and new releases.

But it seems to me that the contents of the current Cygwin
installation plays a part in how setup decides what to
download.  This I find confusing for a number of reasons.
Of course it conflicts with my preconcieved model (above),
but also:

. Since download from internet can be used on a machine with no
  Cygwin installation, it can work without the installation info.

. When "download from internet" is run twice in succession,
  the second run doesn't notice some (any?) of the downloads
  performed by the first run, so you get them all again.

. The value of separating download from install is reduced
  by having this interdependence.  It seems the only logical
  thing to do after a download is to immediately install
  exactly what was downloaded - which might as well have been
  done as the download progressed in the first place.

As an experiment I renamed my cygwin installation,
and ran setup in download mode.  When it had finished
it had created a new Cygwin installation directory
containing etc/setup/timestamp and var/log/setup.log[.full]

I use Cygwin at home and work.  It is quicker to copy the
Cygwin download directory via a laptop than to repeat the
transfer.  But I'm concerned that this could confuse
setup.
 
Apologies for the length of this.  I would dearly like to
know if the current setup is (with regard to download)
performing as intended; what the intention was; whether my
naive idea of its action was ever a design goal, and if not
whether setup can be used effectively for managing multiple
installations.

A few words from Robert et al here or in the FAQ or homepage
could well save a lot of confusion and wasted time for me
and others.

Another point - the Cygwin mailing lists page states that
the appropriate list for this discussion is cygwin-apps, but
also says that this list is by-approval.  It doesn't say
that only subscribers can submit to this list, but I've seen
this mentioned elsewhere.  As I'm not subscribed to cygwin-apps,
and I'm sure the intention is not to stifle discussion on setup,
I'm mailing here.

BTW - setup.exe 2.194.2.22 runs fine for me on W98 SE.

Cliff



--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/