Re: setup testers wanted

["John P. Rouillard" <rouilj@cs.umb.edu>]

In message < 1004742868.9086.31.camel@lifelesswks >,
Robert Collins writes:
>> A few observations:
>> 
>>   1) The view button that is at the top of the package selection
>>      screen initially displays with the word "view" garbled. Clicking
>>      on the view button or changing one of the prev, cur, exp radio
>>      buttons causes a redisplay that properly displays the word view.
>>      This occurs with both ftp and http downloads for the 
>
>I think the initial 'garble' is the dotted line highlight. Added to
>wishlist.

Yup. Just went back and checked it. I think you're right that is the
cause of the garble.

>>   2) I and a couple of co-workers find it a bit unnerving/confusing to
>>      look at the category list and not see anything expanded when I
>>      know I have packages that need to be updated. I would suggest
>>      starting in the partial mode if you are updating an installed
>>      cygwin and starting in category mode for new installs.
>
>Hmm, nice idea. Currently we don't 'know' whether this is an upgrade or
>not.

Hmm, doesn't the presence of /etc/setup/installed.db tell you that?

>Added to wishlist as "remember view mode" - which I think is even
>more user friendly.

I agree as long as the "remembered view mode" displays packages to be
updated.

> 
>>      Alternatively make a category/partial window that shows the
>>      categories and expands the categories that have packages to be
>>      updated with the list of packages to be updated.
>
>Feee free to contribute. This bit of code is rather.... messy right now.

I noticed. I was going to wait till it was a bit less perilous before
I contribute. I'm an admin not a programmer and I was a bit confused
by portions of the code..

>It's only halfway from procedural to oop based approach, and the
>hierarchy is as such rather inflexible without a bit of fiddling - I
>don't want to introduce new errors just now. IMO a sensible way to show
>this would be to have the new view have a 3 layer hierarchy:
>action
>  category
>    package
>
>where action is keep/skip/version/uninstall/reinstall/source

Hmm, what would the action apply to? The category or the package.

>I've added that idea to the wishlist. If you still like the idea of
>showing the contents of 'partial' with categories just say so and I'll
>add that as well.

The idea was just one of the top of my head. What I feel is confusing
is that the category window comes up for what is an "update"
install. But the category window doesn't display any information about
the packages that need to be updated. Just looking at that screen in
a dumb way, I would say everything is up to date since no categories
are highlighted and no packages are displayed.

I think starting setup with the partial view if the installed.db
exists works around the problem. Not sure how it would interact with
the save last view though.  I think what would be really nice (but
would be a lot of work) is the following layout:

  act CATEGORY
  act package
  act package
  act package

where full/partial applies to the packages displayed under each
category. So full/partial would be modifiers for the "category" and
"alphabetical package" screens. The actions for the category would
be something like:

   blank - refer to the individual packages
   keep - sets all packages to keep
   skip - skip (don't install) any packages in category
   current - sets all packages to current version

Obviously version numbers wouldn't be useful for the category action tags.

				-- rouilj
John Rouillard

===============================================================================
My employers don't acknowledge my existence much less my opinions.

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/