[tex-live] TL installer doing things without permission :-(

[Siep Kroonenberg]

On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 11:00:57PM +0200, Norbert Preining wrote:
> Hi Philip,
> 
> On Do, 07 Aug 2008, Philip TAYLOR wrote:
> > was to identify problems before TL 2008 goes live.
> > If the TL installer does things without the users
> > permission, then there will be complaints.  Now is
> > our chance to avoid those complaints, by making the
> > installer ask before doing things.  I have already
> 
> In principle you are right, but even if we are in testing mode, we
> cannot rework that installer. Be sure that we listen to the concerns.
> But there have been long discussions before.
> 
> Do you know how much any, I repeat *ANY* installer on windows changes in
> the registry?? Install Nero, install PowerDVD, install ActiveState perl,
> all of them will make serious changes to the registry.
> 
> The TL2008 installer does:
> - add the bin/win32 to the PATH
> - creates 2 shortcuts on the desktop
> 
> I have seen *MANY* programs creating desktop shortcuts without asking,
> take firefox, take thunderbird, take loads of installers.
> 
> That we do NOT consider a serious problem.
> 
> And adding bin/win32 to the path does *only* interfer with another TeX
> installation, and in this case, well, if you want two systems you should
> know what you are doing.
> 
> And finally, all these changes are *undone*/*removed* when you uninstall
> TL2008.

The path isn't necessarily restored to its previous value. Since one
cannot know what happened in between to the path, there no point in
even trying.  When installing, we remove other TeX directories from
the path, e.g. to keep the path tidy even when you repeatedly
install TeX Live without deinstalling in between.

-- 
Siep Kroonenberg