On 7/3/08, Jeff Hobbs <jeffh@[...].com>  wrote:
> 
> 
>  Just wanted to let you know that we are planning the ActiveTcl 8.5.3
>  release to be the first "fat" AT 8.5.  Exactly how to do this is not
>  trivial, as we want to account for existing installs of both 8.4 and
>  8.5, with whatever local modules are installed (eg, via teacup).



Thank you, ActiveState team, for being so responsive to community input.
I've so appreciated all the work you all have put in through the whole
implementation of the repository. Great job!


The approach we plan to take is to create an AT 8.5 that has a
>  pre-seeded teapot repository of extra modules (not all that were in 8.4,
>  but a good selection).  These will install into the same place as if you
>  were to use teacup.
> 
>  At install time, if no existing repository is found, we just copy over
>  the pre-seeded repository (nice, fast and simple).
> 
>  If a repository is found at install time, we would need to ask the user:
> 
>  a. Use installing distribution repo (blow away pre-existing)
>  b. Use pre-existing repo (don't update with distro repo)
>  c. Merge
> 
>  Option (c) is nice, but it is slow, because it would mean doing several
>  teacup operations to ensure the integrity of the local teapot db index.



Would option b involve just installing ActiveTcl "lite" similar to what we
get today, and the new install would not see anything until the admin did a
teacup install?

My thinking is this - if the new Tcl sees the old repository full of
extensions, things might not play well together.

In fact, thinking along this line, a) makes me uneasy as well.  But
obviously there are a variety of use cases for various things.

In my mind, the most common use cases I can think of are:

1. install ActiveTcl lite - with few add-on extensions
2. install ActiveTcl medium flavor - a representative group of extensions
3. install ActiveTcl full flavor - teacup update equivalent



>  I just wanted to throw this out for others to ponder on.  If you have
>  any ideas or questions, please let us know.  We want to finalize this to
>  try and get a release out next week.


I do a teacup update-self;teacup update as soon as I install a new version.
My biggest need is to do the above on a machine, then to create some sort of
"snapshot" that could then be deployed across the enterprise without users
or admins having to do any sort of interaction with an installer - just
dropping a folder onto a machine, or perhaps pointing to a common
directory/folder and everything working.

This latter is particularly important to me since at home, I'm still
hamstrung with a 48k ppp connection - as wonderful as teacup is, big updates
are tough to do at that speed...





-- 
Tcl - The glue of a new generation.   http://wiki.tcl.tk/
Larry W. Virden http://www.purl.org/net/lvirden/
http://www.xanga.com/lvirden/
Even if explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting
should be construed as representing my employer's opinions.