From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, PP_MIME_FAKE_ASCII_TEXT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,39bde956b245c191 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Received: by 10.68.16.106 with SMTP id f10mr4236492pbd.8.1323330461248; Wed, 07 Dec 2011 23:47:41 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Path: lh20ni82357pbb.0!nntp.google.com!news1.google.com!goblin2!goblin1!goblin.stu.neva.ru!news.tornevall.net!news.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!jacob-sparre.dk!ada-dk.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How to nicely distribute a simple Ada library? Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 01:47:36 -0600 Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: <361x89sndsg9$.16ruxrwxud090$.dlg@40tude.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: static-69-95-181-76.mad.choiceone.net X-Trace: munin.nbi.dk 1323330459 12452 69.95.181.76 (8 Dec 2011 07:47:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 07:47:39 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 Xref: news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:19383 Date: 2011-12-08T01:47:36-06:00 List-Id: "J-P. Rosen" wrote in message news:jbkcjv$og8$1@dont-email.me... > Le 06/12/2011 01:22, Randy Brukardt a �crit : >> (4) Don't worry about fancy installers unless you are planning a large >> project that many people will (not might) use. The amount of time sucked >> up >> by creating and testing such things is immense > > Which installer are you using? I use Inno Setup (which is free BTW), and > found it remarkably easy to use and powerful. It's our in-house design (all Ada code, of course) using Claw for the GUI. I detest installers that spend many minutes doing navel-gauzing before they start, which includes all .MSI-based ones that I've used. So I avoided that -- the actual work of installation is trivial and needs nothing that isn't present in standard Ada packages. But our requirements are fairly complex: we have to copy several thousand files, call various tools to properly (re)locate the run-time library, register patches that make the old, unfixable GUI work, compile Claw if the user wants to install that, check for configurations of Microsoft tools (or tell them what to do if they're missing), allow the user to select a number of options, support the installation of a number of different versions of the product depending on what the customer paid for, and test all of that on a bunch of versions of Windows. It is an infinite time-sink, just like documentation is. I have the actual creation of the installation packages automated, but that doesn't eliminate the testing requirements, or the continual futzing needed when the programs change. No commercial or free package is going to be able to do anything to eliminate, unless it imposes a very strict set of restrictions that I could never live with anyway. (I have a similar problem with most of the version control systems I've seen.) And most libraries are better distributed in a plain old ZIP file anyway -- anyone who can't figure out how to unzip that and use their compiler's make facility shouldn't be programming (in anything!!) anyway. The fancy installer is just a time sink. Randy.