[avrdude-dev] AVRdude for win32 installer

[Gianmario.Scotti]

Hello,


I'd like to point out something I think is rather broken in the way
AVRdude installs under win32. By default in installs under C:\WINavr,
which is logical and convenient, since C:\WINavr\bin is already in
the PATH, as part of the WINavr installation.

HOWEVER.....  once you do install AVRdude this way, it will overwrite
some of the previosly existing files. This wouldn't be a problem IF the
installer cared to back up these files, which, regrettably, it does not.

So what happens? We are bound to break at least one uninstaller for good.
Say you uninstall WINavr --> this way, you will remove all of the AVRdude
files except for the ones in C:\WinAVR\doc\avrdude-4.3.0 and the 
C:\WinAVR\avrdude-4_3_0-win32-uninstall.exe itself. If you now try to remove
AVRdude, it will fail, as it can't find all the files it installed, 
and you are left with a broken entry in the installed packages registry. And
I don't know of any way to clean that registry up (although I am sure there
is a hack for that).

Now let's look at the other scenario: we uninstall AVRdude first:

The log from the uninstall is:

Delete file: C:\WinAVR\bin\avrdude.exe
Delete file: C:\WinAVR\bin\avrdude.conf
Delete file: C:\WinAVR\bin\giveio.sys
Delete file: C:\WinAVR\bin\install_giveio.bat
Delete file: C:\WinAVR\bin\loaddrv.exe
Delete file: C:\WinAVR\bin\remove_giveio.bat
Delete file: C:\WinAVR\bin\status_giveio.bat
Delete file: C:\WinAVR\bin\xpfix.reg
Remove folder: C:\WinAVR\doc\avrdude-4.3.0
Delete file: C:\WinAVR\avrdude-4_3_0-win32-uninstall.exe
Completed

And as the installer did not back up the files already existing in WINavr, 
we are left with a broken WINavr installation, which again will not want to 
uninstall as it can't find all the necessary files, and we have again a
zombie entry in the installed packages registry.

I would humbly suggest a possible solution: do NOT use a Windows installer to
install AVRdude, just a plain zip archive, perhaps self-extracting if you want
to be fancy.


Maybe I'm overly sensitive to this kind of issue, as I work with Unix package
management here. Still, I think it's worth to at least think about this.



cheers


mario

P.S. could you perhaps repackage the Win32 version at least once, as I
have now broken my own WINavr installation? Pretty please?