bugGNU Octave - Bugs: bug #51878, Windows installer: Include version...

 
 

bug #51878: Windows installer: Include version in links in start menu

Submitter:  Markus Mützel <mmuetzel>
Submitted:  Mon 28 Aug 2017 09:27:48 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  GUI Severity:  1 - Wish
Priority:  5 - Normal Item Group:  Feature Request
Status:  Fixed Assigned to:  lostbard
Originator Name:  Open/Closed:  * Closed
Release:  * dev Operating System:  * Microsoft Windows
Fixed Release:  None Planned Release:  None
* Mandatory Fields

Add a New Comment Rich Markup
   

Jump to the original submission

Thu 21 Sep 2017 11:50:21 AM UTC, comment #12: 
John Donoghue <lostbard>
Group Member
Wed 20 Sep 2017 08:36:18 PM UTC, comment #11: 

@JohnD: I was finally able to build a copy of MXE Octave and test this; it all seems to work correctly so please go ahead and commit it and close this report.

Rik <rik5>
Group administrator
Wed 20 Sep 2017 12:35:00 PM UTC, comment #10: 

Patch attached that I believe covers all of comment #9.

start menu shortcuts renamed.

On install/uninstall, it looks up the latest installed version of octave and sets the desktop icons if they exist to it.



(file #41842)

John Donoghue <lostbard>
Group Member
Thu 31 Aug 2017 09:08:19 PM UTC, comment #9: 

Haven't heard anything, so I suggest the following:

1) Only two shortcuts on the Desktop.  These do not use versioning.  They point to the newest version of Octave available.  (Alternative: this points to the most recently installed version of Octave).  Names are "GNU Octave (GUI)" and "GNU Octave (CLI)"

2) Start Menu folder name is "GNU Octave-X.X.X".  Shortcuts in folder drop "GNU" and are "Octave-X.X.X (GUI)" and "Octave-X.X.X (CLI)"

Rik <rik5>
Group administrator
Tue 29 Aug 2017 08:29:24 PM UTC, comment #8: 

Adding jwe to the CC list.  Do we want to prepend "GNU" to "Octave" whenever the SW is described?

I was looking at some GNU utilities that I have installed on Windows and there is a folder in the Start Menu called GNUWin32.  But inside, the folders are things like CoreUtils or Grep and do not inclued "GNU".  In keeping with this strategy, the top-level shortcut menu item would be "GNU Octave-X.X.X" and the individual entries would drop "GNU" and be, for example, "Octave-X.X.X (GUI)".




Rik <rik5>
Group administrator
Tue 29 Aug 2017 04:32:16 PM UTC, comment #7: 

Currently none of the shortcuts themselves have "GNU" in them.

Should the start menu item itself also be "GNU Octave XXXXX" rather than just the current Octave XXXX.

Likewise for the other items in the start menu such as shortcuts to the documentation - GNU prepended to anything that starts with Octave?


John Donoghue <lostbard>
Group Member
Tue 29 Aug 2017 04:08:42 PM UTC, comment #6: 

Maybe Windows users are no "normal users"? (just kidding)

Mike does have a valid point in that the shortcuts (on the desktop and in the start menu) had better be called "GNU Octave".
Whether or not version numbers should be appended is IMO entirely a matter of (1) taste, but as the OP indicated (2) a very practical issue.
An appended version number isn't quite in the way, is it.

mxe-octave installers create a shortcut for octave-cli.exe and one for octave-gui.exe, so pertinent suffixes seem quite appropriate.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume most Windows users have only one version installed. ("Why bother to uninstall if you can just install a new version next to it?")  And the proficiency of many Windows users is usually hard to underestimate.

Philip Nienhuis <philipnienhuis>
Group Member
Mon 28 Aug 2017 08:13:18 PM UTC, comment #5: 

Taking a quick look on my computer, Matlab puts a versioned  matlab shortcut as does Microsoft office and Visual Studio.

Firefox does not.

John Donoghue <lostbard>
Group Member
Mon 28 Aug 2017 07:33:45 PM UTC, comment #4: 

I'm not a Windows user and I have little experience with what current Windows users expect, I don't know what is typical with other Windows programs.

But IMHO, in any operating system environment, you want the user to just see "Octave" or "GNU Octave" as the name of the program, without any version or "GUI" appended to it. For consistency I would think we want the launcher to be the same.

Does Firefox install a launcher calling itself "Firefox 55.0"?

Our standard launcher for GNU/Linux desktop environments has the label "GNU Octave".

Adding the version is mainly useful to developers, people who want to install and test multiple versions of Octave at once. Are these users not technically proficient enough to rename the launcher if they want to be able to differentiate multiple versions?

All normal users just want to run "GNU Octave" and the launcher should say just that.

Mike Miller <mtmiller>
Group Member
Mon 28 Aug 2017 03:54:57 PM UTC, comment #3: 
John Donoghue <lostbard>
Group Member
Mon 28 Aug 2017 02:18:20 PM UTC, comment #2: 

I'll take a look

John Donoghue <lostbard>
Group Member
Mon 28 Aug 2017 02:09:35 PM UTC, comment #1: 

+1

AFAICS this shouldn't be very difficult. I think in the <mxe-octave>/tools/makeinst_script.sh file (or better, the related .in file), in the stanza where the Start Menu en Desktop shortcuts are created (L.280+), this might easily be adapted.
It's just the names of the shortcuts that should be changed, not so much the file names of the involved executables.

Philip Nienhuis <philipnienhuis>
Group Member
Mon 28 Aug 2017 09:27:48 AM UTC, original submission:  

In Windows it is convenient to open the start menu and type the first few characters of the application you want to run, e.g. "oct" if you want to run Octave. This "filters" the links in the start menu and shows a list of links that match these letters.
If there are several different versions of Octave installed on the same computer, there is no easy way to differentiate which link would open which version.

It would be helpful if the version was included in the link name, i.e. "Octave 4.2.1 (GUI)" instead of "Octave (GUI)" and similarly for the CLI.

Markus Mützel <mmuetzel>
Group administrator

 

(Note: upload size limit is set to 16384 kB, after insertion of the required escape characters.)

Attach Files:
   
   
Comment:
   

Attached Files
file #41842:  shortcuts.patch added by lostbard (9KiB - application/octet-stream)

 

Depends on the following items: None found

Items that depend on this one: None found

 

Carbon-Copy List
  • -email is unavailable- added by rik5 (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by rik5
  • -email is unavailable- added by mtmiller (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by lostbard (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by mmuetzel (Submitted the item)
  •  

    There are 0 votes so far. Votes easily highlight which items people would like to see resolved in priority, independently of the priority of the item set by tracker managers.

    Only group members can vote.

     

    Follow 10 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2017-09-21 lostbard StatusPatch Reviewed Fixed
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2017-09-20 rik5 StatusPatch Submitted Patch Reviewed
    2017-09-20 lostbard Attached File- Added shortcuts.patch, #41842
        StatusIn Progress Patch Submitted
    2017-08-31 rik5 StatusReady For Test In Progress
    2017-08-29 rik5 Carbon-Copy- Added jwe
    2017-08-28 lostbard StatusIn Progress Ready For Test
    2017-08-28 lostbard StatusNone In Progress
        Assigned toNone lostbard

    Back to the top

    Powered by Savane 3.13-02a9.
    Corresponding source code