February 10, 2006
> I provide both a PKG and a ZIP for GDC/Mac, and there people prefer the
> Installer (wizard) variant) I think DMD could use both too ? (EXE/ZIP)
> 
> Might try making one with NSIS, as I'm trying to learn that anyway.

No, that wasn't exactly hard... Ended up half the zip size, as well.
Setup screenshots at: http://www.algonet.se/~afb/d/dmd-setup.html

It just unpacks the files in C:\dmd and adds c:\dmd\bin to the path.
(could use some smarts, to avoid zapping any existing config files)

Not being able to post the result/exe kinda defeats the whole point,
but this will work nicely on Windows for GDC (which is distributable).

Needs an extra installer for DMC 8.47, and some .NSI script cleanup,
but other than that it should be good to go... Will post it later.

--anders

PS. Switched from Inno Setup, since the resulting EXE is much smaller.
    It's all scripted, so you only need to change the version numbers.
February 10, 2006
In article <dsf0cq$t8j$2@digitaldaemon.com>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= says...
>
>If someone could put http://opend.org and http://sf.net/projects/brightd out of their misery, that'd be good thing for D-outside-of-DigitalMars.
>
>They haven't been updated since 2002, and just give a bad impression...

SourceForge should give a time limit for projects to release some code or else get deleted. I have no problem with projects that stop but have code, at least someone else may be able to use something from it.



February 10, 2006
In article <dshpvp$m1g$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Stewart Gordon says...
>
>Anders F Björklund wrote:
><snip>
>> Walter does not want to do it for DMD (for Windows and Linux), and due to the non-distribute license nobody else can either.
><snip>
>
>Does DMD really need an installer?  Opening a .zip file and extracting its contents isn't that difficult an operation.

Yes; IMHO, this would help adoptation a lot (on Windows and other platforms).

Probably Walter doesn't want to do this until 1.0 since it would just be another step in the development/release cycle?

>Stewart.


February 10, 2006
Anders F Björklund wrote:
> Dave wrote:
> 
>>> I plan on releasing installers for GDC (the "GNU D Compiler")
>>> Already done for Mac and Linux, but will do for MinGW as well.
> 
>> Will this XP installer allow users to compile/run directly from a windows
>> 'command prompt' w/o having to open a MinGW or MSYS 'shell'?
> 
> I had only planned to do one for the GNU environment (i.e. MSYS)
> But I *think* that it could work for both ? (I'm not a Win expert)
> 

I started wondering myself how this works. It think there is no problem, you can run gcc (and presumably gdc too) on a windows cmd shell, the only difference is that in the cmd shell there is no conversion from POSIX paths to win32 paths.
What is strange, is that that conversion is not made only for the MinGW programs, as it is made for the MSYS programs (there are a bin directory for each of these). For example:
  > gcc /c/test.c
won't ever work, but this will:
  > cat /c/test.c
as cat will understand the path as 'C:\test.c' .
Seems the MSYS programs are linked together with a msys.dll that does that work, though why is it that MinGW is not the same, I don't know.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - CS/E student
"Certain aspects of D are a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural."
February 10, 2006
In article <dsf0cq$t8j$2@digitaldaemon.com>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= says...
>
>nick wrote:
>
>> I think that before a 1.0 is released, the D online presence needs to be cleaned up a bit. Ideally, there would be one site that people could go to and easily get started with D. That means the site would have to be entirely dedicated to D, easy to follow, pleasant to look at, with no duplicated or rendunant/inconsistent information, etc. [...]
>
>If someone could put http://opend.org and http://sf.net/projects/brightd out of their misery, that'd be good thing for D-outside-of-DigitalMars.
>
>They haven't been updated since 2002, and just give a bad impression...

Those aren't the only outdated pages that refer to D out there, but they're the most embarrassing. I have a suspicion that a friend of D (or even Walter) has been paying for the domain name and hosting of opend.org for the last few years, but without any updating its existence doesn't help D's reputation.

jcc7
February 10, 2006
"Stewart Gordon" <smjg_1998@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:dshpvp$m1g$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Anders F Björklund wrote:
> <snip>
>> Walter does not want to do it for DMD (for Windows and Linux), and due to the non-distribute license nobody else can either.
> <snip>
>
> Does DMD really need an installer?  Opening a .zip file and extracting its contents isn't that difficult an operation.

I personally don't like installers - not because they do a bad job, but
because
I never know *what* they're doing to my system. Are they mucking with the
registry? Installing spyware? Replacing uptodate drivers with older, buggy
versions? Phoning home?

With zip files, I can see what's going to happen, and my unzipper isn't going to execute any code from the archive.

In keeping with avoiding an installer, dmd is designed to not require any registry entries, environment variable edits, or even having the PATH set. Uninstall is as easy as just blowing away the directory it's installed in.



February 10, 2006
Very good approach. As a regular (limited) user on a corporate PC, I know it is
very difficult to install something, but you can unzip...
However, others could like installers exactly because they create shortcuts,
update path etc.
Maybe having both?

F



In article <dsir7e$1meh$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...
>
>
>"Stewart Gordon" <smjg_1998@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:dshpvp$m1g$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> Anders F Björklund wrote:
>> <snip>
>>> Walter does not want to do it for DMD (for Windows and Linux), and due to the non-distribute license nobody else can either.
>> <snip>
>>
>> Does DMD really need an installer?  Opening a .zip file and extracting its contents isn't that difficult an operation.
>
>I personally don't like installers - not because they do a bad job, but
>because
>I never know *what* they're doing to my system. Are they mucking with the
>registry? Installing spyware? Replacing uptodate drivers with older, buggy
>versions? Phoning home?
>
>With zip files, I can see what's going to happen, and my unzipper isn't going to execute any code from the archive.
>
>In keeping with avoiding an installer, dmd is designed to not require any registry entries, environment variable edits, or even having the PATH set. Uninstall is as easy as just blowing away the directory it's installed in.
>
>
>


February 10, 2006
> 
> I personally don't like installers - not because they do a bad job, but
> because
> I never know *what* they're doing to my system. Are they mucking with the
> registry? Installing spyware? Replacing uptodate drivers with older, buggy
> versions? Phoning home?
> 
> With zip files, I can see what's going to happen, and my unzipper isn't going to execute any code from the archive.
> 
> In keeping with avoiding an installer, dmd is designed to not require any registry entries, environment variable edits, or even having the PATH set. Uninstall is as easy as just blowing away the directory it's installed in.

Is that your only reason for the non-distribute license ??

February 10, 2006
On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 06:43:51 +1100, Walter Bright <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote:

> I personally don't like installers - not because they do a bad job, but
> because
> I never know *what* they're doing to my system.

Agreed, that is your personal opinion. Other people have different and just as valid opinions.

> Are they mucking with the
> registry? Installing spyware? Replacing uptodate drivers with older, buggy
> versions? Phoning home?

Not all installers are equal. Some at least do let you know precicely what's about to happen etc...

> With zip files, I can see what's going to happen, and my unzipper isn't
> going to execute any code from the archive.

Yes you can, even if its not what you want to happen. For example, replace sc.ini even when its been updated locally. The read-only hack is a big hassle because some files you do want to replace and others you don't!

> In keeping with avoiding an installer, dmd is designed to not require any
> registry entries, environment variable edits, or even having the PATH set.
> Uninstall is as easy as just blowing away the directory it's installed in.

Some people see a standard installer as a sign of maturity for a product.

I'll knock up an install package and send it to you for inspection.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
February 10, 2006
Walter Bright wrote:

> I personally don't like installers - not because they do a bad job, but because
> I never know *what* they're doing to my system. Are they mucking with the
> registry? Installing spyware? Replacing uptodate drivers with older, buggy
> versions? Phoning home?
>
> With zip files, I can see what's going to happen, and my unzipper isn't
> going to execute any code from the archive.

I provide both installers/archives, plain old ZIPs for the paranoid ;-)

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=135857&package_id=149174

> In keeping with avoiding an installer, dmd is designed to not require any
> registry entries, environment variable edits, or even having the PATH set.
> Uninstall is as easy as just blowing away the directory it's installed in.

Well, if you ever change your mind - here are the scripts to make EXE:
(readable as-is, but for use with NSIS : http://nsis.sourceforge.net/)

http://www.algonet.se/~afb/d/dmd.nsi
http://www.algonet.se/~afb/d/dmc.nsi
http://www.algonet.se/~afb/d/AddToPath.nsh [took this one from the wiki]

I unpacked the ZIP files to C:\Temp\DigitalMars and then compiled them:

ftp://ftp.digitalmars.com/dmd.zip
ftp://ftp.digitalmars.com/dmc.zip
ftp://ftp.digitalmars.com/bup.zip
ftp://ftp.digitalmars.com/coffimplib.zip [added this for good measure]

The end result looked like this:

http://www.algonet.se/~afb/d/dmd-setup.html
http://www.algonet.se/~afb/d/dmc-setup.html

Added code to set PATH and keep old "sc.ini"
(it's all in the package specification above)

I will use RPMs and EXEs for GDC, but you can do as you want with DMD.
Just let us now if you need some help with setting the automation up ?

--anders

PS.
The RPM spec to "rpmbuild -bb" RPMS is at:
http://www.algonet.se/~afb/d/dmd.spec

Being updated to fix some quirks on FC4,
since recls/stlsoft doesn't support GCC4...