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Re: Has anyone written an install database conduit?
Alan Harder writes:
> 1. This is how Installer should function! Normally you don't want to add
> the same new program to your pilot every day.. you do it once and you're
> done! This is why the file disappears from the dialog.
On the other hand, if he really wants a persistant reinstall of the
database, it shouldn't be too difficult to hack the Installer conduit
to not attempt to remove read-only files from the directory.
> 2. You can delete apps *from your pilot*. While it may be possible to write
> a conduit that remembers everything you have installed and lets you
> select things to delete, it seems like you might as well just use the
> pilot interface to do the same thing... (since the pilot actually *knows*
> what is on it.. a conduit won't know what items you have deleted on the
> pilot, so its list could be out of date).
Yes, but conduits can ask for a list of currently installed databases
during a sync. That's what Backup does, and what pilot-xfer -l can do
from the command line.
Which reminds me of a trivial bug. Backup makes a lot of noise about
removing databases from the list because they are no longer installed,
but it doesn't appear to actually remove them from the list. It does
this for databases that are still on the pilot too, as I found when I
installed Brain Forest. BF stores each of your outlines as a separate
db, and has an option to let you rename the db on the fly. Backup
looks for the old name, tells you that it's removing it, and then
finds the new name and backs it up.
>
> > Has anyone an updated version of the Installer conduit, or even a new
> > alternative conduit that would cover these kinds of needs?
>
> Some internal magic:
>
> The Installer conduit looks in ~/.pilotmgr/Installer for .prc or .pdb files
> to install. You can just download your updated file right into this
> directory (make sure it isn't compressed) and Installer is automatically
> "configured" to install that file on the next sync!
Which reminds me of a not-so-trivial problem. Installer doesn't do any
integrity checking on the prc/pdb it's trying to install, and a
corrupt or badly formed prc/pdb will cause PilotManager to crash and
burn. Is there anything in the API that could be trapped to at least
look for a valid pilot db header before installing a file? Or perhaps
it would be better to trap the (now fatal) error when the file can't
load and move it into an ".errors" directory?
- Jim
>
> - Alan
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