Hi folks
As you know I'm working on how allow Tortoises (-hg, -cvs, -svn, -darcs etc)
to coexist by sharing overlay icons. This is a long journey, and has
currently led to the TSVN team developing a nice component named
TortoiseOverlay which allows one set of overlay icons to be used by
everybody.
The change is quite small to the THG code, but I have spent some time trying
to figure out how to install this.
Adoption
TSVN 1.5.0 alpha installer contains and uses TortoiseOverlays.
TCVS has some changes in their repository, but not in a published installer.
Installation Tools
TSVN uses WiX and claims that an .msi is the only way to avoid DLL hell
(using ref-count installation)
TCVS uses Inno Setup, using a number of small helper executables.
THG uses Inno Setup and is much less sofisticated compared to the older
projects.
HG uses Inno Setup. This is important as Steve Boroh's patches for the THG
installer does NOT use the .iss in THG, but rather updates the one in HG.
I have looked into replacing Inno Setup with WiX (with the help of WixEdit)
and this is not difficult, but a change of tools always requires a lot of
work. Not only converting stuff, but also reading up on manuals, learning
new concepts, etc.
The TCVS aproach looks like the way to go, but their installer is so refined
that I wonder if a THG installer should have a separate repository.
Nice things from TCVS:
- Installation without reboot (by restarting explorer)
- Supports 32 and 64 bit windows with same installer
- Scripts for inserting version numbers the correct places during
build of installer
- Bundles TortoiseOverlays
ISSUE #1: Should we provide an .msi installer?
I'm not qualified to tell if you have to use an .msi to have bullet proof
rollback / uninstall / whatever to avoid the dreaded DLL
Hell<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_hell>.
In particular, we want the tortoiesoverlay component to be uninstalled when
we uninstall the *last* tortoise, not before that. MSI files claim to solve
this, even if the install/uninstall was aborted - and I'm not sure that Inno
Setup has this kind of transaction safety.
ISSUE #2: Should we set up a separate repository for the installer?
Since Borho's installer-repo contains built components, I think we should
put the helper tools in a source repo.
Should they go along the other thg source, or be in a separate repo?
PS. I'm assuming that everybody wants TortoiseOverlays - I hope I'm not
mistaken here.
Regards,
Peer
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