Per-app MSI-based installers

[Nicolás Alvarez]

2014-07-01 19:26 GMT-03:00 Nicolás Alvarez <nicolas.alvarez at gmail.com>:
> For everybody's knowledge :) I'm working on single-app KDE installers
> based on Windows Installer (built with the WiX toolkit).
>
> My plan is to have a .msi with KDE Frameworks, Qt, and other common
> dependencies that all app needs, and another .msi for each app. Then
> there will be a .exe installer for each app, which chains together the
> deps and the app. The app package will be embedded inside the
> installer .exe, while the dependencies will be downloaded on demand.
>
> To make the executable installers (bundles), I'm using the WiX Burn
> tool. Its default user interface looks like this:
> http://i.imgur.com/zokLHVe.png which is better than the typical setup
> wizard, but it isn't the nicest thing ever either. It's possible to
> change the UI by providing a theme XML file with the dialog layout
> (it's like a Qt .ui), or also by providing custom code in a DLL. I
> will investigate the DLL approach and see if I can make a UI in Qt
> that way :)
>
> The WiX code is available on kde:scratch/nalvarez/kde-wix.git.

I finally have something you can test! Here you can download a
standalone installer (no install-time downloads) of the Okteta hex
editor.
http://winkde.org/pub/kde/ports/win32/msi_setup/okteta-setup-0.0.3.exe (21MB).

Why Okteta? Simply because it's one of the few apps that already moved
to KF5. Kate would be a great choice, but it doesn't work on Windows
at the moment :(

You can start Okteta from the Start Menu -> KDE -> Okteta. The start
menu shortcut should have an icon. To uninstall, either run the
downloaded installer .exe again, or go to Add/Remove Programs (Windows
XP) or Programs and Features (Vista+).

Known issues:
- Oxygen-icons not included, so there are no toolbar or menu icons.
- No help. I didn't package either the manual nor khelpcenter. Trying
to open the handbook from the help menu will do nothing.
- The install directory can't be configured (it will always install
into C:\Program Files\KDE), because I haven't figured out how to make
that work yet. Also, I'm quite sure Bad Things(tm) will happen if you
already have such a directory with matching filenames.

For anything not in that list, feedback welcome, nitpicking included :)

-- 
Nicolás