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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Redhat 7.1 and KDE2.2 are go! - But not for everyone
From:       Jim Conner <jconner83 () yahoo ! com>
Date:       2001-08-21 13:05:48
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Trying to get KInstaller to work correctly on different distros and different 
versions of the same distro would be a nightmare.  That is until the distros 
agree to be LSF compliant.  I didn't know much about Loki's Installer or even 
InstallShield Java version.  I've used the Windows version of InstallShield 
and think it's very nice.  I agree, KInstaller would have to figure out the 
distro and version and then install it correctly depending on what that was.  
The user would have to make sure that his/her version of KInstaller was 
compatible with his distro/version.  They would then have to download the 
rpms that would be compiled by the distro and point KInstaller to them.  
Granted, each distro/version has a different directory structure for each 
version of KDE.  SuSE even has a different set of rpms on their own ftp site 
versus KDE's mirrors.  KInstaller has just become a high maintainance 
project.  New versions would have to be released with each new distro/version 
and with each new version of KDE.  Of course it would have to be released 
after the distro's compiled the source and created the directory structures 
and names for the rpms.  As you can see this would become an impossible task. 
 Packaging of the KDE source needs to be standardized for each distro for 
this to work.  There would need to be a standard directory tree standardized 
naming of each rpm regardless of the distro/version.  Of course getting all 
major distros to agree on what the standard would be, would be another story.

I'll be looking forward to the improvements in KConfig.  Hopefully it will 
fix some, if not all, of the problems of upgrading KDE's config files.

Jim

On Monday August 20, 2001  6:56 pm, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Monday 20 August 2001 17:28, Jim Conner wrote:
> > Well, the KInstaller project has been mentioned.  Also, Loki has an
> > Installer that they use for their games.  I think it's GPL or some such
> > license.  I remember hearing either earlier this year or late last year
> > that InstallShield(main windows installer) was ported to java.
>
> there is also kdeinstaller in kdenonbeta, but kinstaller looks to be much
> further along. loki's installer is based on gtk+, and i'd much rather see
> an installer that looks at home on kde. i don't think java is a good
> solution either (if InstallShield would even work very well on linux.
> anybody tried?)
>
> > Unix. The problem is that each distro is released with a different set of
> > libraries that the binary needs to be compiled against.  The way other
>
> not to mention different paths ...
>
> > projects have gotten around this is to release a static and dynamic
> > binary of their source. Unfortunately, a static binary of KDE would need
> > quite a
>
> a static build still wouldn't work since the C++ ABI varies from distro to
> distro depending on the version gcc installed. within the next 2-5 years
> the C++ ABI on all gcc platforms in use will probably be uniform (due to
> gcc3).
>
> > use a similar format. Just had a thought.  User X upgrades KDE2.x to
> > KDE2.2.  For example, KMail has changed format of it's config files and
> > breaks when loaded because user hasn't removed /$HOME/.kde(2)/.  Wouldn't
> > it be easier if when KMail loaded, it recognized the older config file
> > format and converted it to the new format?  There can even be a simple
>
> this is a very good idea, so good in fact that there is already such a
> facility available (since 2.1) that allows upgrading config files ... as a
> bonus it doesn't require adding useless cruft directly into the application
> in question to check for older config files every single time it is run.
>
> one of the common problems w/config files in total corruption. this will
> hopefully be largely fixed when KConfig gets some checksumming capabilities
> (which it apparently is according to some devel discussion last month).
> KConfig will be getting some large-ish overhauls for kde3.

-- 
 
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