Re: helix installer

[Ian Peters <itp helixcode com>]

On Thu, Sep 14, 2000 at 12:12:09PM -0400, Sheldon Lee-Wen wrote:
>  How does the helix installer/undater determine your distribution
> type? I'm running a modified mandrake7 and it doesn't
> recognise my distro.

Each distribution puts a file in /etc, such as /etc/redhat-release or
/etc/debian_version, etc etc.  We check those files to determine the
distribution that you are using.

I don't have a Mandrake system in front of me, but I suspect it's
/etc/mandrake-release that we check.  You may be able to "trick" our
tools into believing that you're actually on a Mandrake system by
creating this file with the appropriate data (check on a real
Mandrake system to find out what to put there), but!...

Just because you can force the installer and updater to work doesn't
mean everything will work correctly.  There's a lot more to Helix
GNOME than just putting the files in place; we make sure that gdm
integrates smoothly with the distribution's conventions for the
display manager, make our packages resemble the distributions
packages in naming and path conventions, etc.

You're welcome to try, of course, especially if you're sure your
system is a lot like a Mandrake 7 system.  Please let us know how
everything goes (distribution helixcode com), especially the name of
the distribution you are using.  We may be able to determine that
your distribution really is compatible with Mandrake 7, and future
versions of our tools will recognize this, or, if we get enough
demand, we can build packages for your distribution as another fully
supported distro.

Hope everything goes well.

-- 
Ian Peters
itp helixcode com