Get Iplayer for Windows

[Jon Davies]

On 14 August 2011 01:49, dinkypumpkin <dinkypumpkin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13/08/2011 13:22, Jon Davies wrote:
>> The thing I was scratching my head about and wondering how best to
>> solve was the eternal problem of updating things for windows.
>
> This touches on a thorny question vis-a-vis a get_iplayer Windows installer:
> should it be dynamic and net-based, or standalone?  As I've mentioned
> elsewhere on this thread, there already is infrastructure at infradead.org
> for servicing updates of get_iplayer, its dependencies, and the Windows
> installer.  The current installer doesn't make full use of it, but I think
> I've managed to fix most of that.
> [...]
> The alternative is to make a get_iplayer installer more like a desktop
> application installer and bundle all the dependencies, scripts, etc. in the
> installer package.

dynamic vs standalone is one of those unresolvable questions - for
"dumb" users standalone is convenient in that you know you're giving
your users a consistent set of working software.  dynamic makes it
easier for users to install only those (extra) apps they need.
get_iplayer has been dynamic for a while, and I don't see a good
reason for change.  In fact I rather like the way get_iplayer installs
at the moment. mostly.  (I don't see why perl isn't just another
component, I can't see a good reason for it being included in the
installer, given that pretty much nothing else is.)

I have a objection in principle to install/update functionality that
depends on the server behaving in a particular way because it ties you
to servers that can be specifically configured, which rules out many
hosting services - so using server-side redirects somewhat irks me.
I'd prefer something that used a configuration file to work out where
to find things (a bit like cygwin does) to avoid the need to update
the installer every time a component is updated.

>> I'm happy to help maintain the windows version (though I don't use
>> get_iplayer on windows either), but can't commit a great deal of time
>> to it.  It might be better if I commit to maintain windows builds of
>> AtomicParsley (not that it's very hard...).  Platforms I *am*
>> interested in maintaining are ubuntu and the d-link dns-323 NAS.
>
> If you want to take it over (and are planning to stick with NSIS), I'm happy
> to hand off my scripts to you.

I'm not sure "want" is quite the right word, but I should be able to
find some time.

> I'm still willing to get the next version out
Please do, thanks

> FWIW, I think I've automated the Windows build process
> reasonably well.
that's definitely a good thing. I'd been exploring automation, but
mainly while trying to document what I was actually doing.  the
scripts were too fragile and dependent on the config of my system and
it never got into a state where I could reasonably hand it on.

> You hinted
> that were thinking of making your own builds of dependencies, so that
> feature might prove helpful if you decided to bundle everything together.

Did I?  Only for those dependencies for which windows builds are not
readily available (which is why I built AtomicParsley).  I'm lazy.  If
someone else is maintaining builds, and I think I can trust them, I'd
rather let them do the hard work ;-)

>  Anyway, I should be able to get my code up on Github sometime later this
> week, so you can judge for yourself.

Let me know when it's there and I'll have a look.

Cheers
Jon