I only partly agree with some of your points, though. True, Chocolatey is not part of Windows, but it was the first attempt (that I know of) of creating some packages manager for Windows, like apt-get on Linux, and similar. So the statement:
> The main feature of Windows is that software can be installed without much > trouble. is true only for software that comes with an installer and has some update mechanism. But I think that Chocolatey success is also due to the fact that it provides a centralized place to check if installed software packages are up-to-date (again, on Linux distros like Ubuntu you have this feature with package manager frontend). As far as I know, Microsoft has no plans (and never had) to implement any third party packages manager (they only invest in their own products). True, the proposed solution will mainly help Chocolatey users, and **will** introduce a new burden on Nim developers. But, if I understood correctly this thread, the issue rotates around the recent news that Nim might no longer ship as a Windows installer in the nearby future, only as a ZIP archive. An there was mentioning of the fact that developers are currently struggling maintaining the setup version (NSIS et als). So, really you should contextualize better my proposal. > But I don't want to write PowerShell scripts. As I wrote, I was happy to contribute to the first "original" PowerShell script (note the singular), and my proposal was centered around the idea that the Choco package should be automated and self-update with new Nim releases, requiring no further scripting. > Every officially sanctioned way to install Nim needs to be tested, for every > single release. But this is true for _any_ solution, whether Nim script, Chocolatey, or else! > Right now we support: > > * installation via the installer.exe. Again, the question ensued from the official announcement that has been placed along the latest release of Nim: > Note that these installers have some known issues and so will unlikely to be > provided further in the future So, ok --- Chocolatey being a big "No!No!" for some reason I can't phatom ---, we get back to the point of the future of Nim packages for Windows. > ... I'd rather write Nim programs instead. Makes a lot of sense (I'm afraid I can't contribute here though), I just didn't know there were plans in that direction. All I've read on the download page is that installers might soon stop being released, and that the official guidelines are: > We now encourage you to install via the provided zipfiles Again, I don't want to insist but I must: this whole thread started from end users' considerations that presently setting up Nim through zip archive does pose some complications (to _real_ and _unreal_ programmers alike, apparently). I can't avoid thinking that my proposal was dismissed a bit too hastly. I too, like @mindplay have a some programming experience behind (35 years), which if it taught me anything at all that would be that computing is a wide field and there are paths which one might simply never cross if he works in a given field "X" rather than fileds "Y" and "Z". I've started only recently to use Linux software that has been ported to Windows, and I don't have problems admiting that sometimes seting up the right working environment can be puzzling. And I don't think it has anything to do with being _real_ or _bogus_/_wannabies_ programmers --- often it has to do with lack of field-specific experience, or lack of well written documentation. Anyhow ... it's fine. I'll just go for the zip archives and whatever Nim shall offer in the future — frankly, I don't have all these problems seting up Nim from a zip archive. I have more difficulties handling scattered updates (Chocolatey took away 1/2 of the burden through a single GUI that notifies me of new updates for dozens of packages) — but of course, this is _me_, my likes and dislikes, my problems and views.
