setup-*.exe --help default explanation re -D/-L options [Was: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Updated: setup (2.917)]

[Andrey Repin]

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...