specialized installers

[Ralf Habacker]

Jaros?aw Staniek schrieb:
> Nuno Brito said the following, On 2008-03-28 12:22:
>   
>> Innosetup is a very good installer.
>>
>> But how will this apply to the context of KDE?
>>
>> Shouldn't it be less dependent on the mechanisms of Windows?
>>
>> Imagine the restrictions for running a installer on Vista machines where UAC
>> is enabled or under XP/2000 with no administrative permissions.
>>
>> The main advantage of the KDE project for windows (on my humble opinion) is
>> the independence from the restrictions imposed by windows and let users
>> decide what to do next.
>>     
>
> I consider NSIS and Innosetup (rather) only as temporary solution for anyone 
> who wants to play with them. We indeed want and have more and more control 
> over our installation processes and that is good.
>
> That said, of course we won't have equally lightweight installers for 
> particular apps as long as we use Qt, but we do value ease of maintenance and 
> quality, right?
> Moreover (that was probably already mentioned), what a problem with extra 2MB 
> if a number of gfx card drivers' installers contain 20MB+ of additional 
> garbage? ;)
>   
there is no problem i think additional compared to the size of the whole 
kde installation the 2MB of the installer are irrelevant ;)
> As a side note: note however, that some enterprises have policy of only 
> allowing .msi installers in their environments...
>   
Applications on windows more and more supports self contained 
updaters/installers like Acrobat Reader, Apple Quicktime and others 
independently from the Microsoft Windows Installer, they only use an 
initial msi package. To fit this need there could be one msi package 
which installs the kde installer and the software control panel entries 
you mentioned below.
> Again, Ralf and Christian, kudos for your work on the installer(s)!
>
>   
>> Would be good to see KDE as self contained as possible and handle their own
>> installs without resorting to Add/Remove program tab from the windows
>> control panel.
>>     
>
> Yes, putting every application (or rather module like amarok or koffice) in 
> the add/remove list would be indeed an overkill. Note how much this list is 
> broken under Vista (every important KB fix is mentioned there), and I guess on 
> XPSP2 too.
> So we can have our subsystem and just keep "KDE icon" in the control panel.
> Optionally we can have one add/remove entry called "K Desktop Environment - 
> Add/remove programs" or so.
>   
I add this to the installer todo list.

Thanks for this pointers.

Ralf