Windows DMD installer

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:44:04 +0300, Lester L. Martin II  
<lestermartin92 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was a bit skimpy on the projects plan. It's supposed to end up being a  
> D Installer in D for multiple compiler sets, libraries, and some other  
> stuff and it would use DSSS net to get all these different things once I  
> completed that DSSS Net thing. It would end up being like a "package  
> manager" for D because it could upgrade, downgrade and so much more such  
> as resolve conflicts between libraries ("No, you are not allowed to  
> install that because it is not going to work with what you got, can I  
> recommend you X instead, oh, ok you said no, do you want to install  
> anyway, gosh, you said yes, I'll continue, but don't say I didn't warn  
> ya"). Of course that type of resolving feature wasn't going to make it  
> into first release because that's particularly hard. The upgrade feature  
> would upgrade or fail and not upgrade anything. the downgrade feature is  
> a "just in case" feature. Of course, most of this is conceptual at the  
> moment, though I have a lot of the backend of a DSSS net thing written,  
> I have yet to give it the hooks required to download, and install, and  
> have yet to give it a simple command line interface.

Judging by SVN [1] there isn't much to look at at the moment, so I had a  
look at the XML example [2]. Some questions:

1) Why do you have a list of downloads? Are these supposed to be mirrors?  
Or does each one represent a version?
2) What's the difference between package dependencies and download  
dependencies?
3) Why are the package dependencies in human-readable format (and include  
Internet location) rather than reference another package by name?
4) Same for download dependencies - aren't a package identifier and  
version sufficient for a dependency declaration?
5) I don't think installation instructions can be described in only shell  
commands...

Sorry if that was a very rough draft and your actual design isn't  
challenged by these questions.

[1]  
http://dsource.org/projects/dinstaller/browser/trunk/D/Dinstaller%20in%20D
[2] http://www.dsource.org/projects/dinstaller/wiki/pdesc

-- 
Best regards,
  Vladimir                          mailto:thecybershadow at gmail.com