[Maria-developers] Windows installer, WiX version
Hi again, The other contender for installer system of MariaDB 2010, is CPack + WiX. This is a much more powerful solution, but also one that will take a lot longer to implement. CPack doesn't actually support WiX yet, but there is a patch out there to implement the support. This patch is so simple, I don't understand why they didn't just add it already. All it does is copy the built files into a directory structure, and call the WiX binaries. It doesn't output a specification file for the installer, like the CPack NSIS integration does. Instead, the implementor has to supply a .xsl file which the WiX binaries takes as input for creating a .xml file, which another WiX binary uses to build the package. The actual package is a single .msi file which runs like any other graphical Windows installer. Without CPack, the implementor writes the .xml file by hand. The CPack integration makes it simpler to identify the files that will be installed. If the implementor writes the .xml file manually, we have to always keep the cmake built files and the WiX spec in sync. So even though the CPack integration is really small, it does make sense. WiX is capable of very powerful installers that would work exactly like I'd hope to achieve. This means seamless upgrading, user account creation (for setting MariaDB up as a service), service installation etc. These are all things that NSIS just can't do directly, where we'd be trying to bend the system to support what we want. The downside of using WiX is that it's going to take a lot longer to implement a good installer than it is to implement a simple installer with NSIS. I already have a patch for a complete installer with NSIS, albeit one that doesn't ask about deleting database files or with the ability to set up as a service. Making it to this point with WiX is not that easy. I'm convinced that once the WiX installer is done, it's going to be easy to maintain it. Probably as easy as maintaining the NSIS system. And implementing features in the installer will be a lot simpler with WiX, because the system is designed to be powerful. I would like to hear some discussion about this. Should I start spending the longer time on this, or go with the simple NSIS solution for now? Bo Thorsen. Monty Program AB. -- MariaDB: MySQL replacement Community developed. Feature enhanced. Backward compatible.
What about Bitrock (http://bitrock.com/)? PostgreSQL uses it for their installer and it works on Mac, Linux (maybe also BSD), and Windows. Just a thought...
Hi! On 17 Jun 2010, at 18:18, Adam M. Dutko wrote:
What about Bitrock (http://bitrock.com/)? PostgreSQL uses it for their installer and it works on Mac, Linux (maybe also BSD), and Windows. Just a thought...
There is one reason why I'd vote against this - Bitrock charges for a commercial license The way I look at it is, if Bo is spending time creating an installer, it should be available for a commercial binary. The one reason why I see a commercial binary might be useful to us at Monty Program, is when we have NRE customers on the Microsoft Windows platform. We'd want to provide them with an installer, and there's no point creating & maintaining 2 installers Otherwise, Bitrock certainly does look good! Cheers, -c -- Colin Charles, http://bytebot.net/blog/ | twitter: @bytebot | skype: colincharles MariaDB: Community developed. Feature enhanced. Backward compatible. Download it at http://www.mariadb.com/
participants (3)
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Adam M. Dutko
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Bo Thorsen
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Colin Charles