Re: [XBoard-devel] Windows Installer

[Mark Ioli]

Have some thoughts/ideas I wanted to run by you guys:

So far I have a "core" installer that does just the base winboard 
components, no chess engines. Size with best compression: 1.2MB

There is also a "full" install that has everything including a Crafty 
engine (19.3) with docs, opening book (downloaded from Bob Hyatt's 
site), and shortcuts similar to the GNUChess ones. Size with best 
compression: 6.2MB Do you think adding the souce code for each component 
would be too much or even desireable?

Another thought I had was coming up with a network installer, which 
would be very small and present the user with the choice of exactly what 
they want to install, from core components to engines to source code, or 
anything else we provide. These would be kept on the web/ftp site and 
downloaded according to what they chose. It could be made generic enough 
so that it would look for a certain file to know what the latest version 
is and which packages are available to download, so the installer 
wouldn't have to be updated with each release. Could maybe even include 
betas or RCs of upcoming versions if we wanted, again, people could just 
run the same installer they already have. The good side is that people 
are downloading only what they want, so potentially saves some bandwidth 
on the server.

Thoughts/suggestions etc?

Also, how should I make these test installers available to you to try 
out, without releasing to everyone. Is there a space I can upload to 
that only we can access for now?


Mark