[daisy] Daisy Windows Installer

[Marc Portier]

Andreas Deininger wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm currently working on a windows installer for daisy which hopefully
> will make the daisy installation somehow more convenient (at least for
> windows users). If that project is of interest for you, I will of
> course make it available to the community. The installer (based on the
> Nullsoft Scriptable Install System)  is more or less working already,
> however it still needs some fine tuning. I'll come up with the final
> result once I'm finished.
> 

cool!

> For now, I have some questions:
> 
> a) The daisy installation instruction specifies:
> 
>> Make sure that wherever you extract the download, none of the parent
>> directories
>> contains spaces in their names. For example, on Windows, do not
>> extract Daisy inside
>> your c:\Program Files directory.
> 
> What specifically is causing problems if the name of the directory
> contains spaces? Can we overcome that or do I have to enforce these
> restriction inside the installer?
> 

the trouble with spaces in paths is related to them being not escaped
properly in *.bat files which leads to the command interpreter thinking
there are two separate arguments rather then one

so in essence this boils down to the tedious job of checking all those
calls, and making sure proper escaping is in place... and never
forgetting about it... (I'm unaware of any circumstances where the
proper escaping sequence simply cannot be found)

I guess over years we've just learned that the lazy attitude of just
preventing spaces in paths makes our life easier.
(Blast, why didn't they just call it C:\ProgramFiles :-))

If you feel up to running the extra mile and checking all those calls,
that would be great of course...

> b) The installer checks whether the required components (Java, MySQL)
> are installed. If not there will/should be the possibility to download
> these components via internet and install them as part of the
> installation process. Alternatively, I would like to offer a bundled
> version that already contains all required components.
> However I'm aware that there are licensing issues while contributing
> the Java SDK (there is also no direct download link as you have to go
> through the license agreement prior to downloading). So my questions
> are:
> * could one include the SDK in the installation bundle (provided you
> add the SDK License to the license shown in the installer)?
> * is it possible to download the SDK directly via an URL? Or any other
> ideas how to incorporate the SDK installation via internet in the
> installation process?
> 
> c) I've seen that both the initialisation for the repository and the
> wiki can be done without manual intervention by specifying a property
> file via the -c switch. However, as far as I can see, that option does
> not exist for adding a site to the wiki, correct? If so, could that be
> added too, so that the graphical installer could comprise all steps if
> the installation? That would be great!
> 

I think there is nothing to prevent us from doing so, can you provide
the patch?

I'm unsure if we should/could fit this in 1.5 though?

regards,
-marc=
-- 
Marc Portier                            http://outerthought.org/
Outerthought - Open Source, Java & XML Competence Support Center
Read my weblog at                http://blogs.cocoondev.org/mpo/
mpo at outerthought.org                              mpo at apache.org