Re: Pingus Windows Installer

[Neil Mitchell]

> It's some nice work, thanks to the contributor!
:)

> 1. Pingus won't start after the installation on WinXP, one has to start
> it manually from its directory after the installation. (It starts after
> the installation, but it only shows the console and a black screen and
> then disappears again - that gives a pretty bad first impression...)
> The start directory seems to be wrongly chosen - same thing for the icon
> on the desktop. Pingus needs to be run in or from its own directory!!!
I never knew that, I haven't had a working Pingus binary around for a very
long time, I will fix that. Class this one as high priority.

> 2. The installer doesn't create any icons in the start menu. - Pretty
> bad: that's what an installer is made for, isn't it?
> 3. There is no icon on my desktop, but only some standard windows crap.
It should create a desktop icon, but no start menu icon. I'll add a start
menu icon. Once there is a user readme, a program and an uninstaller they
can even have their own start menu group.

> - Modern Installers always put the name of the Program at the end of the
> folder the user has selected via the folder tree. It would make sense to
>   automatically add a "\Pingus\" at the end here, too.
Good idea. I think it only makes sense when the user has selected a
directory using the ... buttons. To make that more useful it really needs to
jump where the user last selected, when they click on ... again. Thats on my
todo list.

> - You don't get to read the GPL... This is a problem as the "ABSOLUTELY
> NO WARRANTY" trash also concerns the installer. I would add that for
> your own safety.
I work on the basis they don't know me, so they don't know where to send the
summons :) Probably safer your way though, just to add a no warranty message
in one corner (clicking through on the GPL seems just painful, given its a
long and dull license)

> - An uninstall feature would make it perfect. I beg you to integrate it.
> There are so many Windows idiots out there, who don't know anything  at
> all. They will have to erase the directory if they want to install a new
> version. And a lot of them aren't mentally able to do that.
If you install a new version over the top of an existing one, it overwrites
the files (asking first, of course). But an uninstall is a good idea just to
delete the thing. There are two ways of constructing an uninstaller - delete
all the files extracted by the program or just delete the directory - and I
have no idea which is more appropriate. Either way, the main reason I
haven't written uninstall is that I have no idea how an uninstaller can
delete itself - and I have tried to find out with no luck.

> As we have an installer now - why are there still no official windows
> builds? My 0.6.0 RC 1.1 runs perfectly on 2/3 of my PCs (it crashes at
> the start on my Win95 machine, though and takes the whole PC down). I
> think, it should be released as a official build - or the 0.6.1 should
> be at least released with a link on the webpage. The only thing that is
> missing is the music and translations  (clanMikMod and getext), but that
> doesn't matter much to me.
0.6.1 will have a Windows binary, and that was due for release 15/04/2004
(today), so should be out soon.

Once the installer is in the SVN I'll start making changes to it, and make
patches against that. I don't want to do much more before it has version
control because its a pain zipping and uploading it, and it works well
enough so don't want to break it.

Neil