setup-*.exe --help default explanation re -D/-L options [Was: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Updated: setup (2.917)]
Andrey Repin
anrdaemon@yandex.ru
Thu Feb 3 08:38:57 GMT 2022
Greetings, Jon Turney!
>> If neither --download nor --local-install is specified, the default
>> is to repeat the same action as from the previous run. If no
>> previous run can be found, the default is to perform both actions,
>> and both actions can be explicitly requested by specifying both
>> --download and --local-install.
> Note that I tweaked the behaviour of this a bit in [1]
> [1]
> https://cygwin.com/git/?p=cygwin-apps/setup.git;a=commit;h=147fc15d0222e050779b18a209991c258d85944f
> I think that makes the current help text accurately describe
> non-interactive mode.
> There are some cases in interactive mode which are obscure (e.g. '-M'
> without '-D' or '-L' gets you whatever mode you used last time without
> showing you what it was, but I'm not sure if that needs to be here.
>> In particular, the fact that the two options currently say they will
>> "only" do their action, and that the default is to perform both, lead me
>> to believe (a) the options were mutually exclusive and one would
>> presumably override the other, (b) this was probably a legacy from
>> before setup.rc stored the previous action, and therefore (c) if I was
>> running setup with `-q` or `-M`, there was no way to get the supposedly
>> default "do both" behaviour; I'd instead need to go through the full
>> GUI.
>>
>> Having now seen how this setting is stored, I've realised I can just
>> call setup with `-DL` and it'll perform both actions again. But I think
>> my assumption that "default" was supposed to mean "default always" not
>> "default only on first run" wasn't *entirely* PEBCAK (even if it mostly
>> was), so that help text would definitely benefit from being made a bit
>> more explicit.
>>
>> (I'm aware my suggestion above is decidedly wordy; it's not intended to
>> be exactly what I think is required, only a first pass at clarifying the
>> key details I think are missing.)
> Perhaps the best thing would be to have something like
> '--mode={download, install, somebetterwordforboth}' and document '-D'
> and '-L' as short aliases for forms of that (which makes the modality
> clear).
Definitely no. You'd have to invent a "better word" first and that would be
a whole new layer of explanation.
I'd vote for removal of -M for unattended operations instead. (I.e. make -q
and -M mutually exclusive.)
I mean, this is an unattended operation, right? You HAVE TO be explicit in
what results are expected from it.
--
With best regards,
Andrey Repin
Thursday, February 3, 2022 11:35:30
Sorry for my terrible english...
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