Uninstaller: 2 questions

[Steven Edwards]

Hi Tom,

I've watched your discussions for a while and have been meaning to
comment but have been super busy. The uninstaller was one of the first
things I looked at when getting in to wine development and it confused
me to no end due to a bug that only showed up when running it under
windows.

On 4/25/07, Tom Spear <speeddymon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why do we show a dialog if there are no uninstall entries found in the
> registry?  Windows does not do that, and I think we shouldn't either.

I agree.

> However, on that same note, I think we should, since this uninstaller
> is not designed to mimic Windows' Add/Remove Programs, catch when a
> program's uninstaller does not remove it's uninstall entry from the
> registry, after the process exits, and go ahead and remove the entry.

The whole windows uninstall process was borked for a long time until
the advent of msi. I think we should follow the behavior of newer
versions of windows and if the process fails to remove the entry, the
next time the user tries to uninstall the application, it should
prompt to remove the offending entry. I know it seems dumb, if the
uninstall really did work but was just being stupid in not removing
the entry, why not remove it? I just worry we will get in to a
situation where the uninstall partly worked and uninstall.exe goes
ahead, removes the entry and then the user is left with old files
floating around. Better to leave the entry and then the next time they
try to run it, prompt them to just remove the offending entry.

Thanks

-- 
Steven Edwards

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and
that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo