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[News] A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0ANN.lu
Posted on 02-Jun-2002 06:47 GMT by Raffaele23 comments
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InstallerNG, a freeware replacement for the official AmigaOS Installer is under evaluation to became the official Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0. You can found it at http://installerng.light-speed.de/ Negotiations between Jens Tröger the programmer of InstallerNG and Amiga Inc. are on the way. I found this news on Amigart and Czech Amiga news.

Bye,

Raffaele
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 1 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Marcus Sundman on 02-Jun-2002 09:22 GMT
The whole install-system should be remade with depencies, but I guess this can wait until 4.2.
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 2 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Chris Young on 02-Jun-2002 10:12 GMT
Just to reiterate what I said on amiga.org, I don't see the point of replacing a working program with a clone of it. Why not just update the official Installer? Does anybody know the answer to this???
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 3 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by cOrpse on 02-Jun-2002 11:27 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Marcus Sundman):
IIRC depencies can already be done , atleast it can check for libs etc ... Would be cool if there was a central reserve of such things and the installer grabbed um as it needs :)
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 4 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by cOrpse on 02-Jun-2002 11:28 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Chris Young):
The same could be said of morphos ......
But i want OS 4 sometime this year , so its best to use the good things that are already around instead of wasting time reinventing the wheel.
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 5 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Marcus Sundman on 02-Jun-2002 13:41 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (cOrpse):
> IIRC depencies can already be done , atleast it can check for libs etc
Yes, but it has to remember them, too.
Let's say I install two apps, A and B, in this order, and they both want to install the same library (which will be installed by A, and when installing B it already exists so it isn't reinstalled). Even if I then uninstall A the library shouldn't be removed. (It should be removed only after _both_ A _and_ B are uninstalled, since also B depends on it although B didn't install it.)
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 6 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by redrumaol on 02-Jun-2002 13:45 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (cOrpse):
get a life
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 7 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by cOrpse on 02-Jun-2002 13:53 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Marcus Sundman):
Maybe some sort of database that ties in with the installer then .
So if App A installs lil.lib and App B also uses it installer checks it database to see what it can remove , it would also allow for uninstalling every app :D
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 8 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by cOrpse on 02-Jun-2002 13:57 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (redrumaol):
Oooo bitchy , i should come back with a nice insult like Get laid , but frankly its never going to happen for you so i don't want to state the obv.
Things like this really make me reconsider submitting RC5 blocks to amiga teams ( e.g. amiga.org ) i should kill my ppc on better thigs like wipeout.
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 9 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Marcus Sundman on 02-Jun-2002 13:57 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (cOrpse):
> Maybe some sort of database that ties in with the installer then
Something like that, yes.
Debian has a great packaging system, and most other linux distributions aren't _very_ far behind either. I think much can be learned from there.
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 10 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by cOrpse on 02-Jun-2002 14:03 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (Marcus Sundman):
I like the openBSD ( maybe others ? ) pkg_add system , start grabbing a package from the ftp and it'll get the others it needs at the same time which is handy :D.
I'm just fearful of AmigaOS turing into a registry like nightmare and having to buy norton like progs to sort it out eek lol .
I think the problem will be sorted if/when AmigaOS gets a standard install package type system ; linux has rpm (deb)and windows to some length has installsheild packages , we need some sort of lha installer system :D
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 11 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Marcus Sundman on 02-Jun-2002 14:09 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (cOrpse):
> Oooo bitchy
If you really are so naïve that you think that MoreFuss (don't bitch about the name, I just think it's hilarious to spell it like this) is like reinventing the wheel then you could at least not be so ignorant that you get mad if someone else gets mad at you for saying so. MoreFuss is much, much more than reinventing the amiga wheel, in the same way that linux is more than reinventing the unix wheel. It's about freedom. Freedom from being at the mercy of a company that might, or might not, do what the users want. At least that's how I've seen it.
However, I'm pleased with the current direction of Amiga, but that doesn't meen it'll stay so forever.
Freedom is seldom a bad thing.
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 12 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by kjetil on 02-Jun-2002 17:10 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (cOrpse):
Well Windows installers has this feature,
the only problem is that not all programs uses it.
firms like there logos in the installers and marketing
informations on otter products etc,
every thing that make the install process longer then needed.
About the old installer, I do think you have grate control over where the files are put,
About the linux installer, (rpm) hemmm. it seems to work even so i hate updating my system
as the dependencies are so dependent of different versions of libs, so you end up downloading 10 packages, installing/checking dependencies one by one,
until you most force install on the low-level drivers (just hopping the new libs are compatible with all my programs),
and when the comparability of the packages brakes you are forced to do an 'ldd ./program' to check the dependencies of the libs the program are not able to load.
if how ever we can automate the download/update/install feature the hole system can be more stable easy to manage,
that is if the install scrips do not fuck up the configurations files or the new pakages are to new, so the comparability breaks with config files.
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 13 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 02-Jun-2002 17:21 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Marcus Sundman):
I hear what you're saying and I believe MorphOS is an excellent
system, however it is not as free as you suggest. In these terms,
all MorphOS achieves is the leveraging of control from one company
to another. If we were to talk of freedom only AROS can presently
be considered.
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 14 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Marcus Sundman on 02-Jun-2002 18:47 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (kjetil):
> automate the download/update/install feature
This is exactly how its done in e.g. debian. E.g. "apt-get install xterm" installs xterm and automatically installs everything it needs, such as libraries, other programs etc.
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 15 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Marcus Sundman on 02-Jun-2002 19:07 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Anonymous):
> I hear what you're saying and I believe MorphOS is an excellent system,
> however it is not as free as you suggest. In these terms, all MorphOS
> achieves is the leveraging of control from one company to another.
I was under the impression that its source was available under a free (as in freedom) license, but apparently I've been misled (and I can't find anything on www.morphos.de saying anything about it). In that case I have to apologize and take it back when I said "MoreFuss is much, much more than reinventing the amiga wheel", and instead say "MoreFuss is not just reinventing the wheel, since it gives the users the freedom to choose as well as creating competition on the Amiga market".
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 16 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by alan buxey on 02-Jun-2002 19:11 GMT
AmigaOS could have a db-type system installed (libdb)
...but no need for a 'registry'.
it would be much better to have a MySQL powered
database of program dependencies and paths etc 8-)
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 17 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Jens Langner on 02-Jun-2002 20:22 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Chris Young):
It`s simple Chris.
Because the old Installer is a total mess. And please don`t blame us
authors if you aren`t able to write correct installer scripts.
InstallerNG definitly is more strict on the original C= installer
language, but that is indeed a good thing or why should one write
something like
(IF () () () ())
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
cond then else and what should THAT be ?!?!?!?!?
There is really no point in accepting that. And BTW, how about new
features ?!!? The old installer is simple a mess and even H&P just
make it worse...
cy,
jens
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 18 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by sutro on 02-Jun-2002 22:19 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (Marcus Sundman):
Have used an Amiga for a while ? One of the many advantages of AmigaOS vs other OSes is that it doesn't need those dependencies at all. Linux packaging system sucks completely, debian or rpm. And Window$ registry is a joke.
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 19 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Raffaele on 02-Jun-2002 23:54 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (sutro):
I want to add some statements to the things which said Mr. Sutro:
Yes, on Amiga you can easily control what the programs add to the system.
It depends from the structure of the programs on Amiga, which usually needs a few libs to stay with the program itself;
It depends from the fact that Amiga OS is an extremely polite OS with a decent structured system of directories in which to put libs and other stuff...
And mainly from the fact that you can put needed libs in the same directory of the main program, keeping all the core OS directory structure free of all that mess which affects for example the folders of Windows and Windows\System (just to make an example from another OS)...
And if you take a look at all the things that on amiga the newly installed program bring with itself, often all is composed only by folders with needed data, or by clips, or by demofiles, AND not based upon unrecognizable proprietary files like crap.bor, data.tal, zero.ser and blahblahstuff.fdd...
And I want to make an advice to Mr. Törgen and Amiga Inc.
Ok we want on Amiga to keep tracks of every program we installed...
We want also to avoid windowized registry behaviour
Then, all to do is the fact that we must force the installer to create a log in a well known obliged directory of Amiga that is *S* directory, in which to put all the scripts...
And to avoid Linux Tuxed behaviour (programs which don't work because lack of dependencies of outsourced stuff), all we can do is to force programmers to realize good install-packages...
We can't made many things on this front, because needed outsource libs and other useful stuff...
...are property of different programmers...
A developer could only advice his users to download the requested oustsourced libs from the site of the third party programmer...
...or at least made an agreement of distribution with the third programmer letting him free to join the train of his beloved hypotetical program...
Ok, better choice to stop out... I'm tired and the quality of writing is descening quickly into the basement...
But if you follow me with care, you can understand what I wanted to say....
Bye,
Raffaele
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 20 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Marcus Sundman on 03-Jun-2002 10:29 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (sutro):
> Have used an Amiga for a while ?
No, but that is irrelevant.
> One of the many advantages of AmigaOS vs other OSes is that it doesn't need
> those dependencies at all.
This is simply not true. A dynamically linked program always depends on the libraries that it's linked to. One solution is to put all libraries that the program needs in the program directory, but this isn't a very good idea, since this won't allow other programs to use the same instance of the library.
> Linux packaging system sucks completely, debian or rpm.
Maybe so, but it's still better than what the majority of the operating systems have. It's also much better than how it's done on the Amiga, i.e. the user has to keep track of what libraries are neede by what programs and manually install/uninstall libraries when appropriate.
> And Window$ registry is a joke.
I also think it's horrible.
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 21 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Targhan on 03-Jun-2002 16:34 GMT
Adding a dependancy system is asking for trouble. If someone writes an installer that installs a single library used by multiple applications, the uninstaller should simply warn and inform the user about the danger of removing said library. Even the plain old installer works just fine, when the author reads the style-guide of the documentation! Adding more overhead is not the answer.
Speaking of checking dependancies, a few years ago there was a great tool available that checked your libraries and mui libraries, reported their version number, could compare them from an online database, and (finally) informed the user what the varius libraries they had installed was used for. I don't think the system is updated anymore, but a simular system could be integrated into OS4 (or even MorphOS). I would opt for an updatable offline database structure though...
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 22 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by kjetil on 03-Jun-2002 17:01 GMT
Now I have grate idea how about if os it self where able to
download the library's when there were missing or to old to use, form the official site/and Aminet if needed.
This most me an option. :) please
A new Installer Tool for AmigaOS 4.0 : Comment 23 of 23ANN.lu
Posted by Chris Young on 04-Jun-2002 18:22 GMT
In reply to Comment 17 (Jens Langner):
I don't blame the authors of Installer for my inability to write Installer scripts - I blame the documentation and the fact that the command syntax changes between versions. Trying to write a script which works in Installer 43.3 *and* InstallerNG is difficult, supporting older versions of Installer as well is nigh on impossible. See the "confirm" option which seems to have several different syntax, none of which work in all versions of Installer.
I agree that supporting estoric command syntax is largely a waste of time, but if you can do it then invariably somebody has - in that case, it is necessary to support it or you end up with less than half the scripts in existance actually working.
As for new features, I haven't seen any reason to switch to using InstallerNG, and nobody as yet has given me any compelling reason to do so. Installer may well be a mess - I haven't seen the source code so I can't comment.
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