> On Jan 14, 2025, at 10:40 AM, Paul Dufresne via Freedos-devel > <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > I just wrote: >> So... my installation is mostly ok... except for dog and rcal >> Might be programs I installed myself rather than install by the installer, >> not sure at all. > > Jerome, does the installer knows if a program was manually installed?
No. There is no difference between a package that is installed by the Installer, FDIMPLES or manually using FDINST, FDNPKG. This does not include packages that are simply unzipped. It only applies to packages installed using a package manager. There are several major differences and issues that can arise when simply unzipping packages. > Would the installer update a package more recent than the installed one, if > it was installed manually? No. The installer does not “update” any packages. If you are “upgrading” a previous version of FreeDOS, the installer “uninstalls” any package that it will be installing for the package set selected (BASE or FULL). After that is done, it then “installs” the selected set of packages. So if you had previously FULL and then select BASE for an updated version of FreeDOS, only the BASE set of packages will be upgraded. This also applies to any Bonus or downloaded packages. However, there is a fairly easy alternative. FDIMPLES /UPDATE That will tell FDIMPLES to check the installed version of packages against the available version on the Install or Bonus media. It will pre-select any newer package to be “upgraded” (be removal and re-installation). This works best when using CD-ROM media. Because of package management, system configuration files and drive letters. That can get complicated when only USB is available. Mostly because you would boot from USB and the DOS you want to update is not the DOS you are using at the time. It is doable. But, it is more of a chore. It is usually just easiest to boot from the USB and copy everything to a spare partition and reboot the already installed system. If networking is available, you can also use FDNPKG to update the packages using the update/download repository. But, DOS networking is slow and this can take a while. Alternatively when USB is the only option, there are a couple other things that can be done when installing FreeDOS to have the installer update other packages. The quick and easy way is to Switch to Advanced Mode. This can be done by launching the installer in advanced mode with “setup adv” or it can be done at any time the installer is waiting on the user to select an option by pressing CTRL+C. Then on the screen that normally asks for either BASE or FULL, a custom option will be available. Selecting this you can select additional packages you want to have installed. If the additional selections are already present, they will get updated. Also, since you are installing using USB, there is "FDIMPLES /CONFIG” option. It permanently modifies the BASE and FULL package sets on the USB install media. I originally included this ability in FDIMPLES with the thought it would make it easier to install things to multiple machines. For example, if you were a school that had 30 computers that you wanted specific packages installed, you could easily customize the package set once and install the same thing everywhere. But, I don’t think anyone actually uses this ability. So, it will probably go away in the next major version of FDIMPLES. _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
