#2489: Registry keys are created in per-user HKCU instead of system-wide HKLM
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Reporter: nimnul | Owner:
Type: bug | Status: new
Priority: normal | Milestone: 6.10.1
Component: None | Version: 6.8.3
Severity: normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Difficulty: Unknown
Testcase: | Architecture: Unknown
Os: Windows |
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Comment (by nimnul):
There is no such thing as "installer that doesn't modify the registry".
Any installer at least creates that "uninstall me" entry, and MSI
installers modify much more. Installers are a poor choice for portable
packages - a classic "binary tarball" package is much better for that
purpose. For example, if you install something to a removable disk, and
move the disk to another box, the registry won't go with you, and you'll
be in trouble.
More reasons to have tarballs (or 7z/tbz/whatever) are to allow
installations to a company-wide network drive, and to allow GHC to survive
OS re-installation.
It's a pity that GHC installer is not an MSI installer - MSI is more
robust than other installers, and is better fit for corporate use (see the
list of MSI features in my earlier post - I mistakenly thought that
"Windows Installer" label at http://haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_683.html
meant "Microsoft Installer")
MSI has an API to query installation location for a package, without a
need to know whether it is system-wide or per-user:
Here is .js code, but of course Microsoft has plain C api for that too.
{{{
var i = WScript.CreateObject("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
var p = i.products
for (var j = 0; j < p.Count ; j++)
{
WScript.Echo(i.ProductInfo(p.Item(j), 'ProductName'));
WScript.Echo(i.ProductInfo(p.Item(j), 'VersionString'));
WScript.Echo(i.ProductInfo(p.Item(j), 'InstallLocation'));
}
}}}
Of course I understand that migrating to WiX/MSI is not an option in
observable future, but that would save us from lots of problems.
--
Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/2489#comment:10>
GHC <http://www.haskell.org/ghc/>
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