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Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2012 09:58:26 -0400
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 <CAP-ksogSFMt+e17bmwwvfshXgL7Y2_oUxDZ8WFickBi3DzGBAg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Installation patches
From: Rob Weir <robweir@apache.org>
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
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On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 9:10 AM, Andre Fischer <awf.aoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the last days I looked into how to create installation patches for
> updating AOO.  Using patches instead of full installation packages would
> lead to smaller files to distribute for updating AOO on the next release.
>
> I have created a new Wiki page for my findings.  Please see [1] for an
> overview and the details of how to create patch files.  Note that I have
> concentrated on the Windows platform for the time being.
>

This is cool.  A few questions that I couldn't figure out from the wiki page:

1) How do you determine what files are changed?  Is this done from
comparing two fukk installs?  From dependency analysis of the build?
Manual analysis of the change logs and knowledge of dependencies?

2) Does it handle configuration/profile changes as well?  For example,
between 3.4.0 and 3.4.1 we changed the default for the "check for
updates" setting.

3) You mention that the about box was not updated.  Is that just a
simple bug?  Or a limitation of the approach?

4) How error-prone is this approach?  By this I mean how much testing
would be required before we release an upgrade installer in addition
to a full installer?  Are there any issues with binary compatibility
with dynamic libraries, etc.?

-Rob


> My results for the impatient:
>
> 1. I have written a Perl script with which I have created a Windows
> Installer MSP patch file that updates an installed Apache OpenOffice 3.4 to
> 3.4.1.  Its size is roughly a tenth of the full installation package.  There
> are some minor problems, like the about box still displaying 3.4 as current
> version in the first line.  The second line is OK.
>
> 2. There is already some support for the creation of patch files in the
> make_installer.pl script but this functionality is inactive.  It is not
> triggered by the makefile in module instsetoo_native/ and therefore I can
> not say whether it would still work.
>
>
> [1] http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Building_installation_packages
>
>
> Best regards,
> Andre