[Hellzed]

Hi,
While continuing to code my Linux FS2 bash installer, I had and idea :
we could have mod net installers, which would be lists of files to get to install the mod (VPs, mod.ini, bmp, uncompressed folders...), their URLs and their checksums... All wrapped into a single zip file.

The new generation installers would only have to load these zip files, and would automatically retrieve all the good stuff. Installing big mods like Blue Planet could get easier, and moders could create some "single click installers" easilly (actually, the files i was testing today were pairs text files generated by md5sum * + a list of URLs, inside a single zip.)

No more manual md5 checking ! No more forgotten VPs ! No more wrong folder placing !
And if, in the long run, wxLauncher is to include a community mod browser/downloader, i think this may help...

That's just an idea i'm experimenting with, playing with my bash script installer... I wonder if someone else would be interested ?

[headdie]

Goober is in the process a multi platform "next gen" installer to replace the old one but it is taking some time due to various reason, i believe the most recent progress in in the GOOBER thread

[Hellzed]

Oops, didn't see this one...

EDIT : though, i'm not sure we are aiming at the same thing, i don't have the ambition to someting as big and graphical... I'm aiming first at a light command line tool (a bit like a FreeSpace specific "apt-get" which could install and keep track of mods...)

[niffiwan]

Only comment I have would be that you need to consider the cross-platform issues.  Bash will work for Linux & OSX, but not for Windows   I believe Goobers installer is written in Java to cover that.  But, I doubt that his would deal with installing Freespace2 from either the GOG, or CD versions.  So, if you want to stick with bash then maybe concentrating on the innoextract Freespace2 install (if innoextract is available for OSX?) would result in the least amount of duplicated work?

Or you could chat with the wxLauncher guys about their future plans?  (c++ / wxWidgets coding) http://code.google.com/p/wxlauncher/

Or you could have a look at where Goober is up to with his installer?  (Java) http://svn.icculus.org/fs2open/trunk/fsoinstaller/?limit_changes=0&sortby=file

[Goober5000]

Yes, yes, I know.

However, now that I've completed the memset/memcpy/memmove investigation, I think I should get back to work on the installer.

[Hellzed]

@niffiwan : the problem is I don't know much about coding (I tried a bit of C a long time ago, some extensive PHP even longer before, but I never tried Java and I can barely spawn a GTK3 window in Python...), I only use bash to solve everyday small issues like basic file parsing, managing my Ubuntu system...

The idea for the GOG/innoextract wrapper (it's only about a few input checks, default paths, and innoextract arguments fit to FS2) came to me after I saw FreeSpace 2 and wxLauncher in Ubuntu repositories. People started asking me if the game was becoming easier to install, but obviously the DEB packages only install binaries and leaves the folders empty of base files, campaign files or mod files... I wanted to write some bash script to help people fix that.

Then I thought I could use the same script to manage mods from the Linux console, and it evolved into a tiny (around 250 lines of code at the moment, not including the innoextract part, missing many input checks) install checking and FS2 download caching system...

That's not I don't want to help, but I really don't know how I could contribute usefully to other projects.

[niffiwan]

There's nothing wrong with expanding the Linux innoextract installer to do mods as well.  It's a good idea, just as long as you're aware that the work may be duplicated

[jr2]

For using bash scripts in Windows, I think you can just include cygwin libraries?  I'm probably mistaken, but there you go if you want to poke around..

EDIT:

http://cygwin.com/faq.html

[Hellzed]

I'll have to check how it handles file paths...