Re: Installing beta (1.7) version parallel to current one

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin at cygwin dot com>]

On May  4 15:01, Dave Korn wrote:
> Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> 
> > Did you switch the directory name right at the start or did you
> > switch to the next dialog and then back to the one asking for the
> > installation dir?  This must not happen.  As soon as you pressed the
> > "Next" button, you lost.  In that case you have to exit setup-1.7
> > and restart it.
> 
>   I nominate this behaviour for a lifetime membership in the User Interface
> Hall of Shame. :-(
> 
>   Also, at least for me, exiting and restarting it didn't help.  It hides
> something away in the registry or in /etc/setup or something and I couldn't
> get it to return to parallel install mode without deleting the new registry
> settings and moving the old cygwin tree temporarily out of the way.
> 
>   Can we put our heads together and come up with a better plan?  Maybe we
> should put an actual "Cygwin 1.5 install detected - upgrade or install in
> parallel" option or dialog somewhere?

Sure, right, of course, the earlier, the better.

But the C++ code in setup is crazy.  I was not able to figure out how to
do what you propose above.  I really tried when I implemented the ACL
stuff and using the new registry key and all that in 2008.  I just
failed to wrap my head around the maniac class system which stores the
package information and failed to remove the information cleanly when
the "back" button gets pressed.  The underlying structure of setup was
apparently never designed for that.

In theory, we don't want that anyway.  The release version of 1.7 is
supposed to replace the 1.5 release.  But it would be much better if
setup would allow a clean parallel install nevertheless.

It's just that somebody else will have to come up with the solution for
this problem.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Project Co-Leader          cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat