On 3/13/23 17:57, Tomas Kalibera wrote:
On 3/13/23 17:31, Daniel Possenriede wrote:
Hi,
If I am not mistaken, all Rtools 4.2 (and 4.3) revisions have the same
ARP [1] entries, i.e. all report version 4.2.0.1 (or 4.3.0.1). This
makes it difficult to determine the installed version (is it possible
to determine the installed revision?) and impossible for tools like
winget [2] to update Rtools to the latest revision, AFAICT.
Would it be possible to track the version in the installer [3] for
future Rtools releases again, like it used to be in Rtools 4.0 [4]?
Well the thing is that once you install Rtools 42/43, you can then
upgrade it internally (without Windows knowing). You can upgrade the
Msys2 part, or the MXE part, or both. The MXE part (customized for
Rtools) does have a single version number, which can be found in the
installation. The Msys2 part doesn't, afaik.
See e.g. "Upgrading Rtools43" in
https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/howto-R-devel.html for how
to upgrade and how to find out the current version number of the MXE
part.
So, right, I could e.g. add a non-decreasing unique version to the
build of the installer (e.g. based on that from the SVN where it lives
and the MXE part version originally included), but I doubt how useful
that would be, given that a particular installation can be
upgraded/modified by the user. It could actually be misleading.
Note Rtools40 also could be updated by the user internally.
Hi Daniel,
I've extended the version information in a testing version of an update
of Rtools43, more below, but first with some explanation of how the
versioning works.
A version of an installed program in Windows is stored in the registry
as "Display version": this is shown, together with "Display name" in the
"Add/Remove programs menu" and it is used by tools such as winget to
determine the version of an installed application (so e.g. also in
"winget list").
An installer in Windows has in its meta-data has a "Product version" and
a "File version" - one can see them in the Windows explorer via
"Properties/Details". This can be set also for other files, not only for
.EXEs of installers. The distinction for general files is that "File
version" refers to the individual file and "Product version" (shared for
many files) to the application. The distinction for installers is
usually that "File version" refers to the installer, but "Product
version" to the application.
A Windows installer may set the display version and display name for the
application it is installing, usually at the end. Many installers,
including that of Rtools, don't do that explicitly, and a "Product
version" from the installer meta-data is used, instead, for the display
version. A "Product name" is used for the display name. In Inno Setup,
used by R and Rtools, "Product version" is given by "AppVersion", "File
version" by "VersionInfoVersion", and "Product name" by
"UninstallDisplayName" (there are also some rules to take these values
from other entries when not specified, more in Inno Setup documentation).
Historically, Rtools installer used two-component product version, e.g.
"4.2" or "4.0". Therefore, winget could offer an upgrade from say
Rtools40 Rtools42, but not between individual version of Rtools40 or
Rtool42. The changes in file version you referred to in [4] didn't make
a difference, because the "product version" stayed the same.
In the testing version of Rtools43, I've added one more component to the
product version, which is the version of the toolchain+libraries (e.g.
4.3.5548). So, one can now see the version of the toolchain+libraries in
the "Add/Remove programs" list, and winget could (be made to) support
upgrades within say Rtools43. Winget registry is maintained
independently of R/Rtools, so it is up to those maintainer if they do
that or not, but it should now be easy since product version has the
information.
I've also extended the file version to have four components, e.g.
4.3.5550.5548, where the last component is the version of the scripts to
build the installer. This corresponds to version in the file name, e.g.
rtools43-5550-5548.exe. The original file name is now also part of the
meta-data.
When one manually upgrades the toolchain+libraries in an existing
Rtools43 installation, the version information stored in the registry
should be updated and the documentation will say how to do that (how to
change the registry accordingly).
Best
Tomas
Tomas
Thanks!
Daniel
[1]
https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs/blob/master/FAQ.md#what-is-an-arp-entry
[2] https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli
[3]
https://svn.r-project.org/R-dev-web/trunk/WindowsBuilds/winutf8/ucrt3/rtools/rtools64.iss
[4]
https://github.com/r-windows/rtools-installer/commit/7f23f0d0442d72922014ec4082c8bdd437364cef
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