installer improvements

[Morgan Gangwere]

On 4/5/2010 3:47 AM, wefwef wefwef wrote:
> After using cygwin for years, and having some recent difficulty
> installing, I took a look at the installer to actually try and
> understand it (a novel concept I know!). Here are my thoughts on the
> gui - I think it could be made considerably more user friendly with
> some minor cosmetic changes.

Personally, as a UI fanatic, I have no problem with it, and I get really 
nitpicky about design. Lets hear your gripes, shall we? :)

> The View button is being used to do two separate and unrelated tasks.
> - Switch between category and list view
> - Choose between partial, up to date, and not installed.
> I suggest that additional radio buttons be used to select between
> category and list view.

They are *not* unrelated. In fact, that button keeps me *sane*

What it does is change the perspective of looking at the packages; the 
fact that one view happens to be a tree view ("by category") instead of 
a linear-list ("by is-installed" or "is-downloaded") is a happy 2nd or 
3rd order effect. *any other way of doing it would be a kludgy look*.

> The terms used are not the clearest (and believe me, things are tricky
> enough already)
> Partial              -   I suggest change to 'to be be installed' or similar
> Up to date        -   I suggest change to 'already installed' or similar
> not installed     -   this is clear, no changes necessary

Partial: Downloaded (or marked for download/Updatable), but not installed.
Up To Date: Downloaded, Installed and latest version.
Not Installed: Self Referential.

> The way that (partial, up to date and not installed) is selected, via
> clicking on a button multiple times is not very common in gui design.

It sure as hell is. Look at Synaptic: Uses the same ideology; If the 
debian folks were braindamaged (which, frankly, some of them are) they 
would be working on GNOME projects (Except Synaptic, which also has this 
ability)

> It doesn't allow you to see all of the available choices at once. I
> suggest replacing this button either with a group of radio buttons, or
> a drop down list similar to the way that you can change the view in a
> windows folder (details, list, icons).

I believe the view-mode you're looking for is "full"

> I suggest that a new column be introduced, indicating whether a
> package is already installed or not. The installer has this
> information - it would be nice if it made it available to the user.

There's already two of those -- they're called "Bin?" and "Src?" -- 
which indicate if the binary and/or source packages are installed.

> Also, on an unrelated note, it would be very nice, to sort the list of
> mirrors in order of latency, or auto select the fastest available
> mirror.

Lets see, the server list contains 30-50 servers. Setup.exe is 
single-threaded for a reason until you get to the installation, where 
upon it actually forks off some threads to do real work.

Lets assume that you're not on the greatest of net connections... say 
average ping of 180ms (thats my average ping to the local transfer 
station)...

5 [pings] * 180 [~ms] *50 [servers] =  45000 ms
thats 45 seconds your machine is *stopped* going and checking latency.

Inb4 "make the main server report them" -- not a good idea.
First, the main server's going to be right on the backbone, therefore 
giving *low* pings. This will create a false sense of hope and when it 
takes forever for it down download even though the ping was low, users 
get grumpy.

Inb4 "Have a round-robin DNS" -- Again, not a good idea.
Each server has a *different* set of packages because some of them are 
purely *volunteer* maintained. Its just a sad fact that most (if not 
all) of the people who work on these projects make... $0 maintaining the 
servers, packages and tools.

AS for gripes about the deterministic-y of the installer: its entirely 
deterministic. What you do, however, is not.

If you notice, there are three options in the installer for "setup mode" 
-- one is normal install off the net, another is download packages only, 
and the third is install from local cache.

The "download packages only" will churn whatever portion of a package 
tree you wish down into a filesystem *locked to a particular server*.

that is, if you choose "C:\Cygtemp\" as your "download directory" you 
will find that there's a folder there for the URL of your chosen mirror.

This lets you back up an entire server then turn around and install it 
on a network-less machine (by pointing it to "cygtemp"'s logical new 
location)

Give You A Hint, I at the age of *13* was able to download and install 
and configure Cygwin... 1.3 I think it was... It was definitely about 
five years ago... onto a machine with no internet connection whatsoever.


-- 

Morgan Gangwere

 >> Why?
 > Because it breaks the logical flow of conversation, plus makes 
messages unreadable.
 >>> Top-Posting is evil.

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