Steve Underwood wrote:
HICHENS, David wrote:
I guess I should stop the installer from even allowing you to change
the install directory, since its just an unnecessary source of
problems.
Hmm that sounds like a strange approach to the problem. How about
fixing the
tools so they can handle installation where the user requires? Something
that pretty much all other software is capable of!
Be my guest. Go ahead. Do it.
My previous message was a bit terse, so let me expand.
This is not a simple problem to fix. First, the Windows installer
already has the ability to install in any directory to the extent that
much Windows software has - not much. The last time I tried to installer
MS VisualStudio in a non default location (probably V5.0) it was very
quirky. MS Office was no better. Few products really don't care where
they are installed unless they are very simple, and the .exe depends on
few other files. You need a good reason to choose a non-default place
for any install.
This problem is much greater with the GNU tools. What you said is not
true. Most software cannot be installed in an arbitrary place. Although
it is common practice with commercially packaged Windows software, this
is still only a few percent of the software produced. Most in house
produced Windows stuff I've seen requires a specific install location.
Programs for DOS, and later Windows, generally gained the ability to use
arbitrary install locations to get around the fact there was no
standardised pattern for doing things in the MS world. That didn't
really settle down until Win98, though Win95 got fairly close. The last
time I used MS server software (NT 4.0 days) much of that gave you no
choice about the install location, since they had finally worked out
where they really wanted it to be. :-)
Other platforms have had a well structured pattern for locating
installed files from the beginning. This includes most things which are
not Windows. Unix software is almost always built tied to specific
locations for installed files, and there is no reason to do otherwise.
Admins know where to look for things, there are less possibilities for
security holes, DLL hell doesn't occur, etc.
The GNU tools come from the Unix world, and are built with specific
install locations in mind. Changes at install time are possible, but
then you need to specifically coax headers, libraries, etc. to be seen
where they really are, instead of where they were built for.
The GNU tools are not blameless in all this. They do not properly
provide for file names with spaces in them. If you build them to go in
"c:\Program Files" you are in trouble! I've tried, and gave up trying to
work through all the quirks this causes.
The bottom line is this. If you do a huge amount of work wading through
all the problems to identify them; getting patches accepted for the GNU
tools to work around their limitations, and Windows limitations; and
generally feeling miserable you end up with something no more useful
than what you have today. Just install the tools in the default location
and they work just fine.
Regards,
Steve
