This is Installer.app in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 13-Dec-1991 14:09:02 From: brunkhorst@mayo.edu (Geoff Brunkhorst) Subject: Installer.app (was Re: Infoworld Rumors) In article <1991Dec13.110620.21974@medisg.Stanford.EDU> buckaroo@medisg.Stanford.EDU (Matthew N. Petach) writes: > In article <-c9H8$z74@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) > > I hate $1 floppies. I just installed Adobe Plus Pack. 5 > > floppies... 20 minutes because I had to feed floppies into the > > machine. At my wage+bennies, that's more than $10. Or in this > > case .333 hours away from my kids... I'd pay for the CD-ROM, save > > the trees, save the time (by doing the install at 4:59pm and > > walking home), and save the mylar. > > > >This problem could be alleviated if NeXT provided a way to combine the > >installation package. One should be able to copy all of the Install > >files into one directory then install the App. Then you could play > >with your kids for 15 or 20 minutes and when you came back the job > >would be done. :-) > > This can be done. It is not a trivial matter; if you want > instructions, email me. > (It's trivial enough... I could figure it out with my "Unix for VMS bigot's" cheatsheet ;-) Whoa... Mid-thread course correction. 20 minutes loading disks onto the harddrive is 20 minutes... whether I do it installing direct from floppies, or do it by copying, catting, and installing (Yeah, I've done it for mathematica and WordPerfect for woebegotten cubes). Time is money (and lost hockey ice time with my son ;-). CD-ROM's are still clearly better, especially if mounted random access (I assume NeXT's are treated like RO harddrives, mounted and accessed like a disk partition), because, you can easily NFS mount the drive and run Installer 'n' times for 'n' products in parallel. Now I can either a) install several products at once on one machine, or b) install several machines at once, over the network. AND NO PRELOADING FROM FLOPPY. Mike does has a point. DEC's VMSinstal script is able to install off of distribution media, or off of disk, with no modifications. This is sweet for network installs and (of course), installing off of CD-ROM instead of tape, since the same instructions are essentially valid for both (invoking the procedure is slightly different for hard disk files than tape files, but I digress). NeXT's Installer overall is pretty good, but this is a weak point. --------------------------------------------------------------- Geoffrey Brunkhorst brunkhorst@Mayo.edu Research Computing Facility (507) 284-1805 Mayo Foundation, Rochester MN, 55905 USA fax (507) 284-5231
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Marcel Waldvogel and Netfuture.ch.