[gdal-vb6-appdev] Re: [Gdal-dev] VB6 problems gdal_fw.dll reference

[Frank Warmerdam]

On 11/23/05, Gerald Buckmaster <buckmasterjunior at yahoo.com> wrote:
> One might be a modification to Frank's installation script - is it possible
> to find and replace an existing FWTools entry in the system variable PATH
> automatically in the FWTools installation script?

Gerald,

I specifically avoid updating PATH to avoid having FWTools conflict
with other packages with shared components on the system.  However,
you might well want to setup a "GDAL_BIN" directory somewhere, point
your PATH to include it, and when you want to upgrade to a newer
FWTools just copy all DLLs from FWTools\bin to it.

> Another "fix" might be implementing a installation strategy that preserves a
> generic directory, i.e. FWTools vice FWTools1.0.0a3.  You would still have a
> need to set PATH, but it would only need to be accomplished once.  Of course
> an uninstall would need to remove the entry as well.

I think you can pick an install directory, so you could always remove the
version info from the install path at install time.  If you do this, it is
best to uninstall the previous version before installing over it, though
this isn't strictly necessary.  It just avoid having old icons around with
confusing version information.

> Another "fix" could be to determine which GDAL libraries are critical to
> your VB6 app and implement a custom installation of GDAL...though this could
> be a configuration nightmare if done without a thorough plan, and MIT
> licensing may preclude a "partial" installation.

This is fine as far as I know.

> What do you think Frank?  Are you using MSI for FWTools installation?

I don't use MSI, I use "NSIS" for the installer stuff.

Best regards,
--
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