Larry wonders:
> Why not use the STD (store to disc) and restore from disc file to handle the
> file characteristics.

This is, in fact, the technique used in the latest GCC distribution which we
went to hoping it would solve a number of the issues previously mentioned.

Unfortunately :RESTORE appears to be *too* good at handling "file
characteristics" in some cases.

When you store a file with a Posix path, :STORE appears to literally "store"
all the attributes of the directories along the path to the file, and when
you :RESTORE that file, you end up with the security and other attributes of
all these directories being set to what they were in the STD archive.

So after installing the latest GCC, which installs files in, for example,
/usr/local/bin, you'll have our idea of what security should be on your
/usr, /usr/local, and /usr/local/bin, which might or might not be *your*
idea of what it should be.  From one point of view thisis a benefit as it
allows automagically "fixing" the often broken default Posix security
settings, but in general you don't want every freeware package you install
on the machine to potentially rearrange all your security!

We're still investigating to determine exactly how :RESTORE works with all
of its various options and whatnot, so there may yet be a solution to this
and other problems.

One might suggest that :RESTORE could be fixed or some option added to make
it more compatible with the purpose we're trying to use it for (assuming
there isn't already a combination of options and procedures that will
eliminate all the issues) but fixing :STORE/:RESTORE isn't a great solution
because we're then stuck with an annoying dependency on whether or not you
have the fixed version of :RESTORE or not.

Y2K conveniently synced everyone up on a reasonably recent and functional OS
version, and so it would be nice to come up with an installation mechanism
which will work using only the basic facilities of any Y2K version of MPE
(i.e. 5.5 PP 7 or later).  I wouldn't have a problem with making the user
get and install a new "installer" utility, since this would only have to be
done once, and this one utility would hopefully be applicable to many
different packages.

G.