On Thursday, 8 December 2016 at 02:06:30 UTC, Brad Anderson wrote:
On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 19:33:33 UTC, Jim Hewes wrote:
On 12/5/2016 3:19 AM, Kjartan F. Kvamme wrote:
On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 09:24:59 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
How about a bounty for a new windows installer using inno
setup ?
There are several issues related to the nsis-based windows
installer
(even on bugzilla). The problem that happened last Fall with
a virus
false detection may happen again. "Braddr" proposed to
handle digital
signatures in case it would involve payment.
Programming an installer is a small job but it has a long
term impact
on the user experience. Worth 100€ imo.
Any particular reason to use Inno Setup over for example Wix
Toolset?
<Delurk>
In my last job I worked on installers (which I didn't like but
someone had to do it.) I recommend WiX over Inno. The main
reason is that WiX produces an MSI and Inno doesn't. An MSI is
just a data file, not an executable, and is thus better for
security. I normally wrapped the MSI in a bootstrap exe. But
we had one customer that was part of the government and
wouldn't accept anything but an MSI.
If you want, you can generate the XML with a program. I just
didn't because I figured it was easier to modify if you can
directly see the XML. My install builder was actually a
combination of C# and WiX. I never found scripts to be
flexible enough and it's just one more language to know.
Jim
</Delurk>
Yes, if DMD is going to switch the installer to something else
it should be MSI. It's the official way to create installers on
Windows and IT departments prefer it. Just switching to another
installer executable generator is a lateral step, rather than a
step forward.
Microsoft seems to be wanting to quietly deprecate MSIs too and
are increasingly not using them for their own products (likely
to push people to the Windows Store). I'm not sure if the
Windows Store is suitable for DMD though and adapting DMD to it
would probably involve quite a bit of work and would likely
involves legal agreements with Microsoft that only the D
Foundation could make.
The "Desktop
Bridge"<https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bridges/desktop> in Windows 10 lets Win32 apps become Appx packages and work like universal apps. It's really geared toward GUI apps, though, with traditional activation mechanisms (shortcuts, file type associations, protocols).
Building a new MSI installer with WiX for DMD itself is pretty
straightforward. MSI and WiX support almost everything but you'd
need install-time code for:
* _ReplaceInFile replacement
* UCRT manipulation in SDK searches
What's not straightforward is the "extras": Visual D, DMC, D1,
Visual Studio. Usually, that kind of thing is handled in WiX with
a bundle but that doesn't fit this pattern well, because the
expectation is that you're handed off to the other installer. And
order matters, because you need to get VS installed first to get
the detection right but Visual D expects to come after the DMD
installer.
It's not a hard problem, just one that doesn't really fit into
the MSI model well.
