[Akjiaer]

Hey Guys!

I read on the installer page, that Goober5000 will rewrite the installer. What is the current state of this?

[General Battuta]

Closer to done than to barely started, but not done yet.

[Akjiaer]

Will it be open source like turey's installer and written in java? If, is there a possibility to help? I can program in java and i looking for a small project.

[Goober5000]

At this point it would just follow the "adding people to a late project makes it later" rule.  Development is almost done though; all of the major components except for one are complete.

But once it is done, I'd welcome anybody who offers to bugfix or add enhancements.  It is Java and licensed under GPL 2.0.

[Akjiaer]

Too bad. But i understand this. Hope you will release it soon and maybe i can help. :-)

[jr2]

If you want to help, maybe see if there is a way to make it work with torrents?  (Specifically, gameupdates.org torrents).

See, then we wouldn't have to really worry about bandwidth.  I know Azureus is a java based bittorrent client that is open source.

But, since I'm not a coder, maybe this is all more complex than is possible to code easily or it isn't efficient. I wish, though.  I really wish.  gameupdates.org speeds were blazing fast when I used them.  I'm uploading FSO + mods to GU once FSPort releases the next version, but I'd rather there be a way to automatically download specific torrents containing mods, which could then be updated as needed and the installer would get the latest one.  (I know GU supports replacing torrents with new versions, as well as some sort of auto-download script.  Also, the GU coding is open source.)

[Goober5000]

Adding torrent support would involve such an extensive amount of work that it would really just be like writing yet another installer.  Not sure it's worth it, especially since there are so many BitTorrent clients around.

[jr2]

Hmm, that was part of my point (pardon any ignorance here, I don't code): Azureus is an open source java-based client.  GU's site code is open source.  Installer is open source java... how hard is it to patch together a new creation using source from Azureus + Installer?  Ofc I know it could be a nightmare... but I don't know that it necessarily is.  All I know is that our bandwidth (read: slow / 404 mod / MVP downloads) would be solved.

EDIT: Another thought, if that turned out to be nightmarishly complex, maybe writing an Installer plugin for Azureus (there are many other plugins!) would be easy.  (At least feasible if making a torrent Installer wasn't?)

[Iss Mneur]

Hmm, that was part of my point (pardon any ignorance here, I don't code): Azureus is an open source java-based client.  GU's site code is open source.  Installer is open source java... how hard is it to patch together a new creation using source from Azureus + Installer?  Ofc I know it could be a nightmare... but I don't know that it necessarily is.  All I know is that our bandwidth (read: slow / 404 mod / MVP downloads) would be solved.

EDIT: Another thought, if that turned out to be nightmarishly complex, maybe writing an Installer plugin for Azureus (there are many other plugins!) would be easy.  (At least feasible if making a torrent Installer wasn't?)

The integration of FRED and FS is pretty bad and they were (mostly) written by the same developers and designed to be complementary.  Two independent applications that were designed for two different purposes would be even worse to integrate.

To be honest, I think the best bet for bittorrent distribution would be to make a "DVD" (even if it just ends up being a folder and not an ISO) and make that available via BT (similar to The Babylon Project's DVDs).  On this DVD you then include a copy of the installer that is able to do "offline" installs.

The "DVD" for offline installs is something that Diaspora requested as a feature in wxLauncher 2.0, but if Goober wants to tackle it sooner that is fine by me.  Gives me more time to do wxLauncher 2.0 right .

[Goober5000]

The new Installer was designed to have the ability to do offline installs.  That won't be available in the first release, but it should follow soon after.