How About an InstallSqueak Image?

Andrew C. Greenberg werdna at gate.net
Tue Jun 15 05:11:30 UTC 1999


>This is too hard! The point of an installer is to create a single file that
>is run and does all the setup needed.

I disagree, particularly when compared to the alternative.  Having a 
plurality of different kinds of installshield programs for every 
machine format, and the difficulty of reupping the installation for 
each new release of Squeak makes installShield a very attractive 
solution, IMHO.

And, of course, either approach would be massively better than the 
status quo; which makes it very difficult for newbies and regulars 
alike to install.

With installSqueak images, you will have two files, yes, but so what? 
One is UNIFORM across all systems, while the other is the necessary 
MACHINE-SPECIFIC VM for that system.

With the alternatives proposed so far, we are obliged to find an 
installation technology for each system supported (or abandon install 
support for that system), and we need to "build" the installer for 
each new release as it comes out.  This is error-prone (as we have 
already seen in existing releases) and unnecessary.

The virtue of installSqueak images, as conceived, is how trivial it 
will be to reup the installSqueak every time we want to do a new 
release.  All we need do is run a single method passing a 
specification of the uninstall and Squeak does the rest.  When it 
doesn't do what we want, we simply fix it -- all the code is written 
in Squeak!

Far better than the alternative of ad hoc installation across every 
platform; leaving some platforms without special installation codes. 
With installSqueak images, we AUTOMATICALLY have an installShield 
facility with every new format supported, that runs pixel-for-pixel 
identical across all tese platforms.

>Further, the drag-image-over-VM idea is very fiddly for typical Windows
>developers. Double-click the EXE should open a VM, assuming there is one and
>only one in the same directory.

Well, if you really NEED to do it by double-clicking, sure, no 
problem, just name your installSqueak image Squeak.image and you have 
your wish.  I suppose we  could teach it to rename the Squeak.image 
file before uncompressing if that is important.  Alternatively, we 
could teach the VM to look for an installSqueak image by another name 
if it cannot find the Squeak.image file before failing.





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