Cool VL Viewer forum

Ok, I won't be very diplomatic for a change: personally, I think the thing sucks and I would rather have the overlay tar archive back.

Love,
Lia

Please, elaborate !... Why does it "suck" ?...

I know, I know. It wasn't exactly providing constructive critizism. And I realize that the way I am doing things is probably way different from how other people do it.

My usual procedure for a new version was starting the download, unpacking Snowglobe in the meantime, then unpack the overlay into the new folder, apply my patches, change the symlink for the folder and I was done. No need to even reach for the mouse, and I was done in less than a minute. Plus, no need to run any opaque binary as root when installing to a system location.

Now, I need to run this 'obscure' installer binary, click, click, type, click, wait for it to download something, wait, wait, click.

And then I still have to apply my patches (which obviously needed updating again due to the shell script changing name) and adjust the symlink.

In other words, I always do what more or less amounts to a "fresh" install and tend to keep several generations around in case I need to back out. This has proven valuable in the past on occasion. Backing out is just a matter of changing the symlink I set up, so it's a quick and painless procedure.

I can obviously see the installer as a Good Thing as far as the overall picture is concerned, especially for people less skilled, but I can't help disliking it for my own sake.

Love,
Lia

I might add a way to point the installer to an already downloaded Snowglobe archive/installation package so to skip the download step. I'll have a look to see how this could be done.

Note however that the Linux distributions of SL viewers and TPVs have always been an exception: contrarily to Windows and MacOS-X builds, they never had an installer so far... AFAIK the Cool VL Viewer is the first viewer to provide a full fledged installer for Linux, which many people will find handy, I think.

Also, you don't *need* to be root to install the viewer in any directory, as long as you have permission to write to the latter.

As for how "obscure" the installer is, I'll just point you to the Cool VL Viewer sources (have a look into linden/indra/newview/installers/) and to InstallJammer.

Actually Kirsten's did have an installer as well in the end.

I'll just have to get used to it, I suppose.

Love,
Lia

I love the installer, being the Luddite that I am. Merci, Henri.

The new installer that I just uploaded should fit all needs and hopefully contempt everyone...

See the Linux Howto for the screenshots (a Windows howto is in the works).

I don't think it's so exceptional. In my case, I also used to fresh install, patch, keep fallback versions around, and symlinking is good practise. If you ask me, I would always prefer a transparent archive over something binary you have to execute and install even to just see what you've got. And if the overlay package isn't easy enough to handle, simply add an installer script for those who need it. Or use and installer for windows and an archive package for linux, which might meet the user group's habits. That's my opinion.

Now there are use cases where the new installer approach is making things more difficult.
For example, the quick creation of customized distribution packages for each new release of Cool VL Viewer was so easy in the past. I haven't settled for a solution yet, but I would love to somehow get just-the-plain-files.
Notice that InstallJammer seems to have an option to not only export as binary but also as tar/zip. (See platform choice options).

You can still do it... You can install as many viewer versions as you wish on your system: just install each of them in a different directory (change the suggested destination directory for another and voila !).

I've been bugged enough but many people to get the viewer installed in an easier way, not to mention the many others that believed that the Cool VL Viewer was just a "patch" to Snowglobe (when it is just based off/forked from Snowglobe's sources, like every other v1 TPV). The installer is a big step forward for ease of installation for 95% of the user base, and is in no way an impairment for remaining 5% (especially since with the newest installer, you don't have to go through the Snowglobe download step if you got the Snowglobe archive on your hard disk already).

I don't see an increase of difficulty between now and before... Before, each time you wanted to install a new version and patch it, you had to untar Snowglobe, then untar the overlay, then patch the files. Now you just have to run the installer, then patch the files... It's in fact now easier !

Sorry, but the quota on my ISP-provided website is not infinite, neither is my free time !

I would rather have the overlay tar back, too...

My usual procedure is:

- download the overlay tar file
- install the source rpm package for the previous one
- change the version number in the spec file
- rebuild the rpm (which, thanks to the changed version number, uses the tar file from the first step)
- put rpm on fileserver
- update package repository on fileserver


and then I can lean back and watch all linux computers on the lan get the latest version whenever the users decide to install updates...

that being said... when kirstens introduced their installer for linux, I stopped using kirstens.