Re: Request for feature: more flexible setup routine

[Andy Koppe <andy.koppe@gmail.com>]

On 25 July 2010 03:54, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 07:10:08PM -0500, Marshall Abrams wrote:
>>One of the beautiful things about Cygwin's setup.exe is that when--perhaps
>>in the middle of trying to get something done before a deadline--I realize
>>that a Cygwin package I didn't think I'd need would help.  If it hasn't been
>>*too* long since I last installed, I go and mark the package to install,
>>carefully make sure that I mark all other new packages as "keep", and hit
>>next.
>
> *Although* you should be able to set everything to "keep" and just
> update the one package that you want

... by simply clicking on the Keep button near the top of the package
selection screen.

This makes me wonder whether Keep shouldn't be the default, on the
principle that programs shouldn't do anything unless the user asks for
it.

Also, if you're trying to stick with a proven install, forgetting to
click Keep is much worse then if you're trying to stay up-to-date yet
you forget to change from Keep to Curr. In the first case, you need to
restore a backup assuming you have one, whereas in the second you just
need to run setup again.

Yet of course the argument for having Curr as the default is that we
want to encourage users to update to the latest versions as we can't
support a myriad of different combinations of old package versions.

Hmm. How about leaving the default as is but remembering the state of
Keep/Curr/Prev/Exp across setup.exe invocations? Would a patch for
that be welcome?

Andy

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