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Re: Better Windows installer(s) - volunteers needed

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Ian Clatworthy пишет:

Adrian Wilkins wrote:


1. Someone volunteers to summarise the consensus and list any
   outstanding issues to be decided or further investigated.


Thanks for this. It was nice to see several people summarise the thread
to date, even if those summaries differed quite a bit. :-)


 * Continue with Inno Setup for installer
   * Explore demand for MSI installer


So I want a firm decision on this by Monday. In my mind, there are three
semi-independent issues:

1. Need. Are there teams that won't adopt Bazaar because MSI features
   are a requirement to meet their IT policies? (If so, are those
   teams realistically going to adopt Bazaar 2.0 anyhow or will they
   wait another year or two, i.e. until DVCS is perceived as mature.

2. Perception. Will hard-core Windows developers dismiss Bazaar as
   "Windows technology ignorant" because of choice of installer
   technology? (This actually worries me more than #1.)
I don't understand this. Do you mean: "Bazaar treats Windows user as second class citizens"? But it's true. But the size of this true will be different for different people.
See per example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/995636/popularity-of-git-mercurial-bazaar-vs-which-to-recommend/995851#995851 

and comments to that answer.
The biggest problem I see though is: people decided to use DVCS on Windows, start using Bazaar, found some blockers (sometimes very tiny but there is always something to find), look at Mercurial, throw away bzr and ride hg. Do you have any ideas why and what we can do about this? 


3. FOSS tool maturity. Is WiX or equivalent capable of delivering
   a functional and reliable installer?
IIUC WiX is tool developed by Microsoft and later open sourced. If we think MS guys don't understand how to write tools to build MSI then it's dead end. It may be not so pleasant to use as some non-free alternatives, but it's a native Microsoft tool. 


 * Make plugins selectable subcomponents of the installer
   * Hierarchical component trees seem possible according to help
 * Don't install TBZR by default


I believe everyone agreed to these.
Hierarchical component tree for plugin will require some cogging. There is nothing difficult but one need to understand Python. Perhaps I should do it, I will try to do it on weekend, but I can't promise on 100%.

References

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