Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!pds From: pds@quintus.uucp (Peter Schachte) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: S/W Installation methodology Summary: have persistent versions of ASSIGN, SETENV, MOUNT Message-ID: <896@quintus.UUCP> Date: 21 Dec 88 23:22:39 GMT References: <3128@sugar.uu.net> Sender: news@quintus.UUCP Reply-To: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte) Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc. Lines: 34 In article <3128@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: [about software installation] >The discussion centers on just what that [installation] program should *do*. > >Me, I think that you should just copy the files to the hard disk and run the >program. Let the program ask you questions to finish the installation if it >hasn't been done the first time you run it. This sounds like a good principle, but you still haven't said what installation should *do*. RECAP: Matt Dillon and I independantly sugggested a (blessed by Commodore) script file that is executed from your startup-sequence. Someone else (sorry, I forget who) suggested a directory all of whose files would be executed from your startup-sequence. I kind of like the second better, because installation and deinstallation are easier, but it requires some new standard software, which the first approach doesn't. NEW PROPOSAL: Implement a global *persistent* ASSIGN, SETENV, and MOUNT (any others?) in addition to the current ephemeral versions. So when an application installs itself, all it has to do is make the ASSIGNs, SETENVs, and MOUNTs it needs, using the persistent versions. One way to do this would be with a command PERSISTENT that takes an ASSIGN, SETENV, or MOUNT command on the command line, executes the command, and then puts the line in a S:PERSISTENT-STARTUP script (which is executed from your startup-sequence). Of course, it first removes the line it should replace, if there is one. This should be trivial to implement, aside from the issue of trying to Execute() BCPL programs. -Peter Schachte pds@quintus.uucp ..!sun!quintus!pds