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dom96 / choosenim

Tool for easily installing and managing multiple versions of the Nim programming language.
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
680 stars 64 forks source link

Create Windows setup file #202

Closed EchoPouet closed 3 years ago

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

Hello

My goal is to create an installation file for Windows with mingw. It will allow developers to install easily without using a terminal and ready to code.

If and when this PR will be accepted I will propose this installer in the Windows package manager aka winget.

Unfortunately I don't know Travis and I can't test the CI, I hope that it isn't too complicate.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

I'll create a version without mingw.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

Hello @dom96,

Can you say me if you can test my installer exe and if this PR is ok for you ?

Thanks.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

It's done, but there is a problem with yes | choosenim stable command during CI.

$ yes | choosenim stable
      Info: C:\Users\travis\.choosenim\downloads\dlls.zip already downloaded
 Extracting dlls.zip
       Tip: 4 messages have been suppressed, use --verbose to show them.
     Error: Unable to extract. Error was 'Cannot create a file when that file already exists.
        ... '.
The command "yes | choosenim stable" exited with 1.
EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

I don't understand this problem for Windows. In your code you use "-o" option to overwrite extracted files.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

@dom96 can you run the CI on the master branch to check if it's my modifications that crash the CI ? Please.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

The latest fix in master has resolved my CI issue.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

It's done ! I removed the MinGW version because choosenim download it if missing.

@dom96, can you merge this branch please ?

Also, where is zip archive is created ? I needed to copy dlls and I didn't find the zip process as example.

Thanks.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

@genotrance and @dom96, can you try the setup in your computer before validate please ? I test only on my computer and It will be interesting to try in yours.

genotrance commented 4 years ago

@ArMour85 - as great as this is, is there any value given choosenim can now standalone on Windows (no dlls) and that it can also add to PATH with --firstInstall? What else does this installer do for the user?

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

@genotrance, when you want to install an application in Windows and you have the choice between a zip file and an exe file, which one do you use? Certainly the exe file because it is simpler, you do "next->next->close". It's the same for Linux or MacOS, an installer will always be preferred.

It is a mistake to believe that a developer is necessarily a computer scientist. I know some very good mathematicians who can write super algorithms in Python but who don't know how to use a terminal and don't know the environment variables. They use the installation exe and run the Spider IDE. I once asked a colleague to test the Julia language for his work and he answered that he will do it when an installer is proposed but not before :/

On Nim's forum we often talk about how to increase the popularity of the language, forgetting that it must first be installable everywhere and easily. I consider choosenim to be the official installer of the Nim language in the same way as Rustup (https://www.rust-lang.org/learn/get-started).

To come back to your question, the installer will do the same thing as the "runme.bat" script but above all it will create an uninstaller that will delete the folders created by choosenim. Which is for me a minimum.

If this PR is accepted, I will publish the installer on winget (https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli).

dom96 commented 4 years ago

I feel like this overcomplicates something that we've already had. We used to provide a self-extracting archive which works in a very similar way to the rustup-init.exe, I think we could start doing this again.

Thinking about this some more, maintaining this would be a pain, we've been there and done that with Nim itself. The only thing missing from the solution I outline above is a way to uninstall choosenim, but I bet there is an easier solution here too, perhaps we can simply have choosenim create a deinstaller exe on Windows machines and link to it from whatever registry necessary for it to show up in Windows' Add/Remove Programs list?

genotrance commented 4 years ago

I think the whole point of this PR is to make it accessible to those who are used to having a GUI for install purposes. No harm posting this for every build.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

I feel that you have had a bad experience with Inno Setup. We talk about packaging only one file and it's not very complicated. The hardest part was to create the functions to modify the PATH (install and uninstall) but now it's done and it works.

I'm pragmatic, I use what is available, which works and is still maintained.

We can of course create a self-extracted with a script/exe that change the registry and show up the uninstaller in Windows' Add/Remove Programs. But it will be necessary to maintain this part code or scripts with the next version of Windows or for some particularity. It's better to spend time in choosenim and not the installer, Windows or others.

genotrance commented 4 years ago

I moved build.sh into the scripts directory, might need to rebase for that. Also, will need to use $VERSION_TAG instead of $VERSION.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

Last changes done.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

Do you think you will soon have time to merge it ?

dom96 commented 4 years ago

Needs rebase. I will merge this, but a word of warning, if the installer itself is broken or this installer generation breaks the build I will not wait long before removing it.

EchoPouet commented 4 years ago

Nobody can guarantee that will work forever. If there are modifications that break the build generation then the cause will be in the build.sh script but not in Inno Setup script.

If use Inno Setup gives you a rash and you are afraid of your build process. We can stop the merge request and I will create a external project to generate installer for Windows, Linux (deb and rpm) and MacOs.

It's you the maintainer, you decide.

EchoPouet commented 3 years ago

I decided to create an independent project to create the Windows setup here. The project is hosted by GitLab.

Like that, no problem of broken CI and you have nothing to do.

This project's CI, every week, download the latest release and create the Windows setup if it doesn't exist. I also made a Chocolatey package that is in validation process.

A little link in the readme will be very appreciate.

And Happy New Year 🍾

dom96 commented 3 years ago

Sounds good, thank you! Added to the readme. Happy new year :)