Dear all, The purpose of this email is to summarize the situation with the Windows installers and discuss as a group the best way to proceed with the release.
From what I understand, there are two issues with the situation on Windows: Issue 1: Problems related to anti-virus programs. Issue 2: Problems related to MiKTeX. Regarding issue 1, there have been reports that the LyX binaries have been detected to contain a trojan or virus. In some cases, after updating the anti-virus definitions, no problem is detected. I'm personally convinced that there is trojan or virus, and any report based on the GPG-signed binaries are false-positives. However, the anti-virus programs seem to interfere with the installation going correctly. To address this issue, we provide some advice in the announcement (pasted below), and I hope that the anti-virus softwares will investigate the LyX binaries after receiving so many reports and update their databases. One thing we could do, at least with respect to Microsoft Windows Defender, is to make an account and provide our binaries, as discussed here: https://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=mid&q=20180301195117.jd6etggzjlrt2yxg%40steph The current Windows-specific part of the announcement email that I'm planning to send is the following: --- The following statements are specific to Windows users: - After the installation of LyX, the MiKTeX package manager pops up. You can just close it. - If you installed a pre-release of LyX 2.3.0, you should uninstall that version before installing this newer release. - If you have a problem compiling the document Help > User Guide after installation, consider uninstalling LyX and MiKTeX, and then using the LyX *bundle* installer, which will automatically reinstall MiKTeX. - If you have a virus scanner installed and LyX cannot find "latex.exe", as a first step just close the installer and rerun it. --- Regarding issue 2, there seems to be no perfect solution until MiKTeX fixes some issues on their side. See Uwe's summary here for the relevant MiKTeX bug reports: https://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=mid&q=f1027f2e-fa33-f698-1e17-5d9b0b587db2%40web.de As for a non-perfect solution, Uwe has been working hard to figure something out so we can go forward with the release. One proposal is for the LyX installer to silently update MiKTeX. See discussion on this here: https://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=mid&q=773ea89f-cb68-4e69-cc45-b5cda8a4a474%40lyx.org I'm still not certain of some things. Let's figure out a few simple facts so we can figure out options. Uwe, does LyX 2.3.0 require an updated MiKTeX to work properly? Why is this? If not, can we just not ship the bundle and only ship the installer? This would require the user to install MiKTeX or TeX Live on their own so it would not be our responsibility. I'm pretty sure this is not an option and that I've misunderstood something but I ask in order to understand better. Another option is to just release as normal now (with our current installer and bundler installer). We provide advice in the announcement (pasted above) for how to handle possible problems, and I'm hoping that some anti-virus software have already updated their databases, so not as many users will experience problems. Further, although a significant proportion of Windows users have reported problems, many have reported that everything worked fine for them. If we do not go forward with the release as discussed in the preceding paragraph, another question is: should we wait another few days to see if we are ready to release the Windows binaries so we can announce everything together, or should we announce without the Windows binaries? Note that I will be gone for Monday and Tuesday. Please share your opinion on the above issues. Scott
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