Chris Cason <del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote:
> On 25/01/2010 5:16 AM, Warp wrote:
> >   I think that in this particular case the path-of-least-confusion would be
> > for the installer to fail to install by default if the user has no
> > privileges to install to the Program Files directory (with a clear error
> > message stating so), and make the option to install into the My Documents
> > directory non-trivial (but accessible).

> The problem is I can't necessarily tell if it will fail. If I ask the API
> if the installer has write privilege, it tells me "yes". And if it does
> write, the writes are then diverted into the user's profile. This is by
> design, to 'help' legacy software. It's a massive PITA though.

  Sounds like Microsoft.

  It reminds me of the decision Microsoft made with Visual C++ when
compiling to 64-bit. In basically every other C/C++ compiler in existence,
if you compile to a 64-bit executable, the 'long' type will be 64 bits.
Except in Visual C++, where it's 32 bits.

  Why? Because of all the software out there (and I'm assuming a big bunch
of Microsoft software) which non-portably assume 32-bit longs.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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