Re: setup 2.194.2.24: Bug (?) in downloading from internet

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Sun, Apr 28, 2002 at 06:07:12PM -0400, Charles Wilson wrote:
><begin rant>
>Robert, you are a saint.
>
>I am sick and tired of the whining about setup and downloads.
>
>SETUP IS NOT A MIRRORING TOOL.
>
>In order to make this clear, I am in favor of completely removing the 
>download-only option, leaving just install-from-internet and 
>install-from-localdir.  This will force the whiners to either shut up 
>and use a fscking mirroring tool, or help out:

I am really torn on this one.  I fully agree that setup.exe is not a
mirroring tool.  I've vigorously made that assertion on many occasions.

However, I think I may have been responsible for setup's current
behavior of basing what is downloaded on what is installed.  Even if
I was not, though, I think that the explanations about why some people
need this are rather convincing.

If you're on the other end of a slow connection and are apt to be
disconnected every couple of hours, you will *never* be able to do a
complete install since the setup.exe will start from scratch every time
you reconnect.  It doesn't matter if you chose "download from internet" or
not since setup.exe will only consider what's installed when considering
what to download.  That just seems like a bug to me.

If I have this right then even removing download from internet does not
eliminate this problem.

So, I think the right answer to this is the standard one "patches
gratefully accepted".

>Robert has already said what the correct solution to all this is: create 
>a separate program that leverages the setup.exe codebase, to do 
>"multi-source merged mirroring".

I do agree with this philosophy for anything beyond fixing the above, IMO,
glitch.  setup.exe should be a fairly simple tool.  If you find that it
isn't meeting your needs then you should be looking for a better tool.

cgf

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