On 06/03/2023 17:01, Christopher Schultz wrote:
All,
I'm curious... how married are we to the idea of distributing installers
for Windows operating systems?
There are definitely users that use it so I think we need to provide
something that installs Tomcat as a service.
My understanding from others around at the time (remm) is that the
installer was initially intended for developer users rather than system
admins on servers. My sense from the questions on the users list is that
it is more used by system admins.
I only ask because the release-build process is somewhat complicated by
having to build such installers.
Complicated how? Having to use wine to run the installer?
I'll note that all ASF committers can request a full whatever MSDN is
called this week license for use with ASF projects for no cost.
Apple has moved to ARM. Windows also supports ARM, though there aren't a
huge number of such devices in circulation today. Amazon offers
ARM-based EC2 instances for a lower price than their x86-64 equivalents.
I assume one could choose to run either Linux or Windows on those.
We don't currently have any plans to support ARM. Should we? Or would it
be better to drop (direct) support for x86-64 Windows by no longer
packaging Tomcat releases as Windows installers?
As far as I can find, Windows server isn't available on ARM. I don't
think we need to worry about supporting the Windows Installer on ARM
until Microsoft announces plans for Windows server on ARM.
Some years ago, the Apache httpd team discontinued binary packages. For
most *NIX-environments with package managers and/or easy-to-get
toolchains, that's not a big deal, but it still leaves Windows users out
in the cold. The great folks at ApacheLounge picked up the slack and
provide Windows binaries (including "installers") for httpd and several
third-party modules, including mod_jk.
Will Stewart distributes an alternative Windows Installer, but that
appears to only support the Tomcat 9.0.x version, likely because that's
the one he uses for his own personal/professional uses.
I'm wondering if it's time for the Tomcat team to discontinue in-house
Windows installer builds.
Are there other options? The installer doesn't do much beyond expand the
binary installation and set up the service. Can that be done with an
"installer" that doesn't require a complete re-build with every Tomcat
release?
Just skimming through the installer script:
- install and uninstall
- auto-detect architecture (ensures binaries match JVM arch)
- find / choose JVM
- set ports
- configure Manager user
- select webapps to install
- set service name
- file permissions
- silent install
- creates some shortcuts
and wraps it all up in a familiar style UI.
It is also signed in a way that Windows recognizes.
It is okay to expect Windows admins to use a script to install and set
up their installation?
If you are proposing replacing the windows installer with a script then
I can see the potential benefits for us. Shipping a smarter service.bat
(or similar) rather than a full installer has its attractions.
I think this is something we'd probably need to discuss on the users
list if we wanted to move forward with it to see if there are any
requirements we haven't considered.
Mark
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