Re: [XBoard-devel] Installer

[Eric Mullins]

h.g. muller wrote:
> [...]
> Finally we could always give them both. WinBoard is programmed
> to use WinHelp32 if it is there and the .hlp file is found; in all
> other cases it tries the .chm help file.
>
> Although it is not very elegant, I lean to the last option.

I don't see anything wrong with that.  I would prefer Htmlhelp over 
Winhelp though when both can work.

> One other matter:
>
> I see that every file that goes in the install pakage is now in
> the git repository. Is this wise policy? Many of the files are
> already obsolete, and we won't maintain most of them ourselves.
> (E.g. I received a new Pulsar version by e-mail today, the Polyglot
> might still be 1.4w10UCIb22 unless Eric replaced it, etc.)

They are just the files we use for building the installer.  So that they 
are obsolete doesn't matter, they will always be the same ones as in the 
current installer build.

If there are legal issues with hosting those files in git, then I 
suggest we not include them at all.  (on site, nor in the installer)

> In addition I can imagine that there could be legal issues:
> There are files there of various licences. I was careful to obtain
> permission from every copyright holder to distribute them with
> WinBoard, often provided their origin would not be misrepresented
> and mentioned in the package. But now all files are there just
> up for grabs, seemingly unprotected by whatever license agreement.
>
> Perhaps it is better to leave files that come from external sources
> simply out of the repository, so that we can obtain them from
> the original source when we want to re-build the installer.
> I understand now that the files to be included in the installer
> need not be in the same tree as they will be unpacked (unlike
> when I was distributing by zip file). So a simple method to
> upgrade the installer would be to simply use the downloads of,
> e.g. Pulsar, Fruit and Elephant Eye as they are distributed,
> and unpack them in the installer folder subdirectories. This
> would include lots of files we won't include in the installer, but the
> script will pick out what we need.

Because of problems with various external programs, maybe it's best to 
focus on winboard all by itself.  If you want to host your own "Gold 
Pack" you still can.  What did 4.2.7 include?  Gnuchess, crafty, 
timeseal and timestamp.

Now that I think of it, I like this a lot.  Make winboard basically 
standalone and thus a relatively small install file.  That would allow 
you to make your Gold pack and not worry about legal issues on git.  And 
anyone else with a different view of winboard use could make his own 
package with external components.