Re: RPM installer (was Re: SETUP WIZARD FOR CYGWIN?XFREE86)

[Charles Wilson <cwilson@ece.gatech.edu>]

Sounds cool, Dario.  How have your db and rpm ports been generated? 
Which versions are you using, db-3 and rpm-4, or db-2 and rpm-3 ?  Is db 
built as a dll, or as a static lib ?

BTW, for your purposes perhaps you could pack up your bootstrap 
environment into a self-extracting zip file ?

--Chuck

Dario Alcocer wrote:


> Egor, it's very interesting that you mention this approach to
> bootstrapping RPM.  I've in fact built an initial working version of a
> Tcl/Tk GUI installer using the *exact* approach you mention, using a
> small Cygwin bootstrap environment (rpm.exe, sh.exe, mount.exe
> cygwin1.dll, and other necessary programs.)
> 
> The installation is performed in two steps:
> 
> 1. Create the necessary directories and mounts, unpack rpm binary tar,
>    then run 'rpm --initdb'
> 
> 2. Run rpm to install RPM files.
> 
> All the install related tasks (cygwin.bat creation, installing bash
> short-cut, running mkpasswd and mkgroup, etc.) are performed by RPM
> post-install scripts.
> 
> Best part is, it actually *works*.  I've not completed all the work on
> it (I've been too busy with several consulting gigs to spend more than
> 3-5 hours per week on it.)  However, I now have a staff member that's
> tying up the loose ends and getting it ready for actual use (I plan on
> using the Tcl/Tk installer in my consulting work.)  The main
> limitation now is that there isn't a self-extracting mechanism worked
> out yet that would create the bootstrap environment before launching
> the Tcl/Tk GUI installer.  For my purposes, I was planning on creating
> CDs with the necessary bootstrap environment pre-unpacked, so this
> would only be an issue for trying to support a self-contained
> network-based installer like the current setup.exe.  This is not an
> insurmountable problem, so I expect to have something implemented for
> this feature eventually.
> 
> Anyway, at some point I'd like to be able to offer it to the Cygwin
> project.  Unfortunately, it's still very immature to be widely
> released, which is why I had not suggested or mentioned it before.
> Nevertheless, if any of you are interested in playing around with the
> installer, I could put a CD-ROM .iso image (~13MB) up on my web site
> eventually when the work is done (I hope to have a very rough first
> release by the middle of August.)




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