[tex-live] tl17 pretest init

Philip Taylor P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk
Sat Apr 22 08:50:07 CEST 2017



Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> a few days ago you said that you can abort any process immediately on
> Windows.  
I do not think those were my exact words, but let us let that pass.
> Today I had to remove a few files and directories at work
> using the Windows Exploder.
>
> A dialog box popped up saying "preparing for deletion...".  A quarter
> of an hour later I pressed the [cancel] button.  Nothing happened.
> Then I pressed the cancel button in the title bar.  No immediate
> response either.
>
> A few minutes later the message changed to "aborting...".  After the
> lunch break there was still the same message and I had to shut down
> the system with brute force.  Removing the stuff with Cygwin took only
> a few seconds. 
/Something/ (I wot not what) awful happened to the Windows file system w.r.t. Windows 7;
mass deletions now take an eternity, for reasons that are beyond my ken.
> I mention this because I encountered this problem just a few days
> after you said that such things work perfectly on Windows.  And I
> encounter such or similar problems every day.
There is a real difference between the mass-deletion scenario in Windows 7 and the cancel scenario for the TeX Live installer; for the latter, the cancel is /ignored/, not heeded but actioned after an interminable delay (if at all).

But let us move on -- work on an Electron-based installer is looking very promising, and I will report more if/when I succeed in integrating it with the non-GUI installer interface.

** Phil.


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