> > I think the installer could use a little work in this area, to make it
> > smoother. If you try to install one version of FireBird over top of
> > another (or over top of IB 6) you get a warning in the installer, and
> > it won't configure anything, nor register the service.
>
> That is by design. The installation will complete but the user must do
> manual configuration. It is not the installers job to try and guess
> whether the previous install is just broken or whether the user actually
> wants more than one version installed. This way is the safe way.
>
> > It would be good
> > if this were handled automatically in the installer (for example, we
> > could let the user configure the port directly in the installer, rather
> > than just not registering the service).
>
> There are at least three issues here.
>
> 1/ I think the installer should be as simple as possible and accomplish
> the tasks required by 99% of users. Adding configuration screens at
> install time complicates things for most users.
>
> 2/ I know full well we can add loads more functionality to the installer.
> This comes at the cost of making it harder to maintain.
>
> 3/ This sort of functionality should not be in the installer script per
> se. We should be providing it from the command-line tools. This then
> allows users to write their own install script with the installation tool
> of their choice, while at the same time ensuring that all installations
> follow the same rules.
>
>
> So, the first step forwards is to look at the command-line tools and make
> sure that they support configuring multiple instances. (There is still a
> little work to do here.)
>
> The one thing that has been holding me back on this is that with the
> advent of Vulcan the whole installation model will change somewhat. It
> supports a much richer configuration file which allows a single install
> to support unlimited configurations on a single server while also
> implementing a gateway to multiple engines. This really changes all the
> rules and I'm reluctant to embark on major changes to the Fb2 installer
> now, knowing that we need to look forwards to the Vulcan way.

Ever had a look at the MySQL GUI configuration tool for Windows?

Pretty neat ;-)

With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL, Oracle & MS SQL
Server
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com
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