[wpkg-users] update vs. install check

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Matt,

Matt Miller wrote:
> 3. Client with Firefox installed that doesn't have a Firefox entry in
> wpkg.xml (or no wpkg.xml): WPKG runs, sees it has Firefox 3.0 installed,
> which meets the logical check and adds Firefox to wpkg.xml at the
> current revision. The installed version is not the correct version, yet
> the revision is correct... Now we have to wait for the next update to be
> at the correct version.

If the installed version is not the correct version and your check still
matches, then your checks are not fine-grained enough. You might add
some checks for file versions or sizes to detect if really this version
is installed. However for me I found it usually to be fair enough to
check for the uninstall entry - the next update for this application
will then be applied to that client anyway. Since I upgrade all my tools
quite frequently I regard it not to be an issue.


> I think it's safer to remove the all but the check for the current version.
> <check type="uninstall" condition="exists" path="Mozilla Firefox (3.0.4)" />
> This way, even if there's a mistake somewhere else, we're sure to get
> the current version of the package.

This is true for Firefox and some other applications which have the
revision number within the uninstall entry string. I prefer applications
without a separate string for each revision. So I would prefer the
Firefox package to add an entry named "Mozilla Firefox" only. Windows
installer also allows to enter a package revision to the uninstall entry
which can be queried independently to the uninstall entry string. Latest
version of WPKG support these checks too.


>> In general WPKG uses the checks defined for a package to verify that the
>> package is (still) installed properly. So in case WPKG installed Firefox
>> 3.0.4 and the user is manually remove it WPKG will detect this (by
>> failed check) and re-execute the install commands.
> 
> This has not been my experience. Once a package is in wpkg.xml, WPKG
> seems to not use the checks anymore. Maybe because I'm using WPKG 0.9.10
> still?

This might be correct. I jumped in to WPKG development and started from
version 0.9. Since then I did some heavy rework on major parts of the
script. So yes, it might be correct that WPKG 0.9 is behaving
differently here. Current WPKG will really verify each package install
status by running all checks on each synchronization. This means that if
a user uninstalled Firefox WPKG will restore it at next run now.


br,
Rainer