John Cole wrote:
I was warring with the same dilema as far as NAnt/NAntContrib. My plan was to install to the same directory as NAnt because, AFAIK, the assemblies have to go into the NAnt bin dir (or a relative path off of it) for NAnt to load them. I was going to make the doc directory install as nantcontrib-doc and nant install into nant-doc or just doc.There was a discussion on this topic a few months ago. The main point of contention was installing NAnt/NAntContrib to the same directory or not and whether or not to include NAntContrib at all in the installer.
My feelings remain the same. Use the MSI target as is. It works great, its ready to go, and it fully exercises the MSM and MSI tasks.
Building a MSI task with the nightly builds would also make sure the MSM and MSI tasks are tested too :-)
There is a certain amount of elegance with a NAnt built MSI of NAnt/NAntContrib. Sort of eating your own dog food. :-)
I have been building and using the NAnt built MSI to install NAnt on developer machines here for over 6 months. I haven't tested rc2 yet, but I plan on doing that today. My last build was 1/11 and it worked fine then.
John Cole
I figured for the NAntContrib installer I would detect the NAnt install dir from the registry (hence the registry entry I add in the NAnt installer). Then I would have a checkbox asking if they want the NAntContrib dir to be the same as NAnt and a textbox/browse button showing the NAnt install directory. If they uncheck the checkbox, another dialog would show up next asking them to browse to a new directory for the NAntContrib install. However, if another directory was selected, the installer would only install the docs there.
Inno Setup has a web download feature that works really well (in fact the Inno team uses it in their installer). So, another possibility that I was toying with was adding a dialog, to the NAnt installer, that would ask the user if they wanted to download NAntContrib. If they checked the checkbox, NAntContrib would be downloaded and installed in the background.
Having said all that, I agree with your statement about eating your own dog food. Also, since the work is already done it does make sense to use the MSI. I simply created the Inno installer because I didn't realize there was already an installer available (albiet you do have to build it yourself) and because I'd as soon work with Windows Installer again as bash my head into a wall. Also, Inno is open source.
Colin
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Geurts Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 8:24 AM To: Ian MacLean Cc: Swoogan; nant-developers@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [nant-dev] Windows installer for binary distribution.
I agree that a win32 install would be a nice addition to NAnt. I think it could get some people using NAnt that would otherwise shy away from it...
The install script in NAntContrib is functional, to the best of my knowledge. It just hasn't been used to generate official installs.
I would say that if it's easier for more people to support innosetup over traditional msi, then we should go that route. Otherwise, if it really doesn't buy us anything, then I would stick with the msi targets in NAntContrib.
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:37:32 +0900, Ian MacLean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Hi Swoogan,
I wrote an installer script for Inno Setup (http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php) for NAnt distribution around my office and I would like to contribute it. Besides copying the files, it adds the nant bin directory the environment path and creates a registry entry pointing to the installation path for third party apps to reference (such as the NAnt-contrib installer I intend to create).
You can download the installer here (perhaps we can move this to
sourceforge if you like what you see):
http://swoogan.com/downloads/nant/NAnt-0.85-rc2-setup.exe
looks pretty cool. NAnt certainly needs a win32 installer. I think there is a build file in NAntContrib to create a nant msi but I'm not sure if its been decided to ship that - certainly its been there for ages and we haven't shipped an msi installer yet.
So I guess now is as good a time to decide. Do we want to : a) go with the msi based installer ( has the virtue of exercising the msi tasks ) b) use Swoogan's innosetup installer ( seems simpler than full blown msi ) c) somthing else ?
btw is InnoSetup free/opensource - I don't have internet acesss right now to check.
oh and how easy would it be to add an installer dialog page that finds the list of available frameworks ( from the registry ) and allows the user to select the one they would like to use as the default ?
Ian
The script I used to create the installer can be found here http://swoogan.com/downloads/nant/NAnt_installer.zip You will need Inno Setup to compile the script (http://www.jrsoftware.org/isdl.php). I simply unzip the zipped binary distribution from SF and drop the script in the root. Running it from there creates an 'installer' dir where the compiled installer is placed.
I've also included a simple nant task for creating the installer from a nant build file in the zip file. The tag is simply: <innosetup script="NAnt.iss" /> (really just a substitution for using <exec>). This task requires that Inno Setup 5 be installed.
Swoogan
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