RE: Questions about Cygwin's setup...

["Larry Hall (RFK Partners, Inc)" <lhall at rfk dot com>]

OK, I think we all get it now.  You'd like setup to do more.  That's the 
tie-in to Cygwin.  You think that its not only the problem but should be 
the solution.  That's fine.  In case you weren't sure, setup is open source
as well, so you're free to alter it to accomplish anything you want.  Feel
free to give it a try if you want.  Beyond this, I don't know what to tell
you.  As far as I can see, this thread is at an end unless someone wants to
pick up on the comments that you made and try to address them in some way
(with or without setup).  

Larry Hall                              lhall@rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      http://www.rfk.com
118 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
Holliston, MA 01746                     (508) 893-9889 - FAX



At 02:52 PM 1/25/2001, Masterson, Dave wrote:
>Well, strictly speaking, I am not a Windows system administrator -- actually
>I'm a UNIX developer who happens to be working in a Windows group at the
>moment.  I was just considering introducing a UNIX environment to the group
>(they already have a messy MKS environment) in as low maintenance an
>approach as possible.  My previous message was just a couple of ideas that
>would make that easier.
>
>With respect to managing packages on a Windows system, what I've seen done
>by others is to put the installable packages (usually copies of the
>package's original CD) up on some central share somewhere and then leave it
>to the individual local system admins (usually the user of that system) to
>install and maintain the package on the system.  In this sense, network
>shares in Windows-NT are often used in the opposite manner of NFS mounts in
>UNIX (ie. the shares hold centralized data whereas the NFS mounts hold
>centralized programs).  For the most part, this is often forced by the
>licensing and installation structure of these packages (ie. single-user,
>single-machine licenses).
>
>Cygwin and all the GNU tools, though, are open-source (free source?)
>products and, so, shouldn't suffer from the strictures of a copyright
>license.  I have installed a great many of these GNU tools on a central UNIX
>server and made them available to many UNIX systems (all they had to do was
>mount the drive and adjust their PATH).  In fact, I have a Perl package
>around here somewhere that allowed me to maintain multiple versions of the
>installed packages so as to allow developers to test against old versions of
>tools if they needed (it also addressed the "clean" uninstall issue).  From
>what I can see of the Cygwin environment, it is very close to having this
>capability as well.  My original questions concerning what Setup.exe does
>with respect to the registry and such were to find out how close.
>
>Another post suggested a slightly kludgy way of doing what I want (I'm still
>thinking about how to apply it).  However, the post at least confirms that
>other people want to do what I'm suggesting and have investigated ways to
>workaround the current Setup.exe to do it.  Ultimately, though, I think
>Setup.exe package should facilitate this type of a setup (or, at least, not
>do anything to get in the way).  In that, I think the "nice to haves" would
>be:
>
>* a command line tool that would create the necessary registry entries for
>Cygwin (so that it can be put into a batch script for all the users to run).
>
>* a "setup" package that could be kept local and updated like any other
>package.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Christopher Faylor [mailto:cgf@redhat.com]
>Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 10:36 AM
>To: cygwin@cygwin.com
>Subject: Re: Questions about Cygwin's setup...
>
>
>You know, this really isn't specifically a Cygwin issue.  If you are a
>administering a number of Windows systems on a network, how do you deal
>with this normally?  Most Windows packages do something to the registry.
>Most Windows packages are updated from time to time.  How would you deal
>with this issue with other Windows packages?
>
>Maybe you need to do a google.com or deja.com search and see what kind
>of solutions are available out there.
>
>cgf
>
>On Thu, Jan 25, 2001 at 10:35:43AM -0800, Masterson, Dave wrote:
> >Hmmm.  Wget is not a complete answer.  What if my "user" doesn't want to
> >mirror it on his system because he feels the network access to the server
>is
> >fast enough?  Also, there is still the issue of the registry entries
> >(remember, I'm not "installing" it on the user's system).
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Earnie Boyd [mailto:earnie_boyd@yahoo.com]
> >Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 7:21 PM
> >To: Masterson, Dave
> >Cc: 'Earnie Boyd'
> >Subject: Re: Questions about Cygwin's setup...
> >
> >
> >"Masterson, Dave" wrote:
> >> 
> >> Hmmm.  The cygwin mailer does some strange things with Reply-to.  Your
> >> message has a Reply-to of "Earnie Boyd <cygwin@cygwin.com>".  Is this
> >> intentional?
> >> 
> >
> >Yes, it is intentional.  It's a means of keeping it in the forum and
> >avoiding private conversation.
> >
> >> With respect to my message, it should be obvious that I'm trying to setup
> >a
> >> "minimum" install of Cygwin.  My thought was that, since only I in my
> >group
> >> pay attention to what goes on with Cygwin, I could maintain a central
>area
> >> where Cygwin is.  
> >
> >Understandable.
> >
> >> I suppose I could send out occassional messages that say
> >> something like "rerun \\my\setup.exe to update your Cygwin", but it would
> >be
> >> much better if it just happened automatically.  
> >
> >I thought you were setting up Cygwin itself centrally.  Once setup the
> >local workstation would then not need changed.
> >
> >> Thus the idea of a pre-setup
> >> central share that I (the Cygwin admin) maintain.  Also, if the speed of
> >the
> >> central share, it probably wouldn't be hard to make a batch script to
> >mirror
> >> it to a local drive (which I might write).
> >> 
> >
> >Use wget to mirror.
> >
> >> With respect to your answers:
> >> 
> >> * Why not make setup a package (say "cygwinsetup") like all the rest so
> >that
> >> it could potentially update itself?
> >> 
> >
> >Just use wget.  Setup a cron job to run weekly or what ever frequency
> >you desire.
> >
> >Cheers,
> >Earnie.
> >
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>-- 
>cgf@cygnus.com                        Red Hat, Inc.
>http://sources.redhat.com/            http://www.redhat.com/
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