CPack Packaging for Windows/Mac (and possibly Linux)

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Sunday 24 August 2008, Mike Arthur wrote:
...
> As we're using CMake and CTest for our build and test system it makes sense
> to use CPack for as much of our packaging as possible. Currently the

/me agrees
(but I'm also no packaging expert)

> Windows packaging and install system is fairly terrible. I realise we are
> from a UNIX background and we want to minimise wastage of libraries etc.
> but we seriously need to rethink the way we are distributing packages to
> users if we want to target the same market that e.g. Mozilla do. If you
> compare the installation process for e.g. Konqueror vs Firefox then its
> fairly insane how hard it is for us (at least last time I checked).
>
> I propose that we set up CPack to create per-package and per-module
> installers for Windows and Mac. I'm going to start updating CPack's wiki
> documentation massively in the next few weeks 

Cool :-)

> and also plan on trying to create a MSI backend for CPack 

Even more cool :-)

> and have experience at Mendeley
> (http://www.mendeley.com/) with creating automatically generated installers
> for Windows/Mac/Linux with e.g. branding/graphics and ensuring that the
> applications install and behave as closely as possible to an expected user
> of that platform. At the moment I'm using a NSIS installer for Windows and
> a DMG with a PKG and .app bundle on Mac.

I will fully support you (as my time allows) and help getting patches in. It 
may involve extending cpack functionality (not sure building multiple 
different packages from one project tree is currently supported).

Alex