Fwd: Re: [gdal-dev] FWTools and GDAL 1.7.0

[Jason Roberts]

Joaquim,

 

I hear your pain about having the space in the name. It would probably not
be too much trouble for the installer to allow the user to change the
installation directory. That is a basic option of most installers so it
would probably not be hard to implement with a WIX-built installer.

 

But I should reiterate that a requirement of this package is that the GDAL
bindings (installed as separate packages) must be able to locate the GDAL
libraries. The one approach mentioned so far is to put the binaries in a
well-known location. If the bindings were designed to look for the libraries
in a well-known location, they would be broken if the user installed them to
a different location. Therefore it is important to pick a default location
and recommend that only very knowledgeable users select a different place.
My view is that adhering to Microsoft's best practice of using \Program
Files outweighs the convenience of using a directory off a root partition
that does not have a space in the name. 

 

An alternative idea is to store the location of the GDAL libraries in the
registry and then permitting them to be installed anywhere with no
consequences. The bindings would read the registry to determine their
location. This is also a fairly standard way to do things on Windows, but it
would be slightly more complicated for the bindings.

 

Jason

 

From: Joaquim Luis [mailto:jluis at ualg.pt] 
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 10:27 AM
To: Jason Roberts
Cc: 'Tamas Szekeres'; gdal-dev at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: [gdal-dev] FWTools and GDAL 1.7.0

 

On 07-01-2011 15:07, Jason Roberts wrote: 

Tamas,

 

WIX looks like a great technology for building the installation package.
I've never used it but I took a quick look and it seems to provide what is
needed.

 

As I understand it, you are pondering whether it would be better to have
GDAL in Program Files\OSGeo\GDAL or in Program Files\GDAL. Is it simply a
question aesthetics or principle, in which it seems proper to put all OSgeo
projects under Program Files\OSGeo, but there could be problems coordinating
the efforts of multiple projects to adhere to that carefully and not mash
each other's files? If that summarizes the issue, then I'd recommend going
with the more practical, less principled approach: put GDAL in Program
Files\GDAL, and OSGeo4W in Program Files\OSGeo4W. It could get messy if both
installers have to be able to create the Program Files\OSGeo directory but
not necessarily delete it when they are uninstalled, because there could be
another OSGeo project in there.


Let me just recall that OSGeo4W proposes the default install directory as
C:\OSGeo4W
This is just my opinion and I feel quite at rest because I'm able to build
GDAL and install it wherever I wont, but I would really hate that an
installer would force me to install in a location contrary to my will. In
particular when that location has blanks in the name (Program Files).
But, as I said it's just my private view.


Joaquim

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