[thelist] Is a super-slick installation necessary?

Ken Schaefer ken at adOpenStatic.com
Wed Jul 7 00:23:19 CDT 2004


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: "Joshua Olson" <joshua at waetech.com>
Subject: [thelist] Is a super-slick installation necessary?


: In your opinion, is a super-slick installation process necessary
: or even appreciated by hard-core system administrators?
:
: For example, let's say you had a program that ran as a system l
: level service and had to copy files into a folder, put in some
: registry keys, and maybe restart some other services to get
: running.  Would you prefer to have some voodoo magic installer
: do all the work, or would you prefer to have some
: good instructions, some helpful batch files, some reg files, etc, and
: perform the install manually?
:
: My thought is that a hard-core admin would want to know exactly
: what's going on, even if it means taking 20 minutes to install the
: service instead of 2. Thoughts?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I would combine the two. The installer app can list what it's doing. And you
could include a simple text file that lists the same.

Whilst I love to know what's going on, I also love to have this presented in
a nice, structured, easy-on-the-eye manner, as this improves my
productivity. I would also like an installer that does it all automatically
for me after I have read the documentation.

Think about the older SQL Server patches. You had to do everything manually:
stop services, backup a bunch of files, replace some files, run a bunch of
.sql statements, run some programs to reset ACLs. It got to the point where
every DBA ended up writing their own batch files to automate the
installations simple because doing it manually is (a) too tedious and (b) an
unnecessary waste of time.

HTH

Cheers
Ken



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