I totally agree with keeping the number of official ways to install Nim to a minimum. And I also believe that unofficial solutions might be detrimental in the long run (for example, the unmaintained Choco Nim package didn't bring much good to those who installed through it).
@dom96 wrote: > Over time this [setup] wizard has become more and more complex, NSIS and Inno > setup are simply too much of a PITA to maintain properly so I'm not surprised > that Araq wants to get rid of it. [...] > I would really love to write a > custom setup generator for Windows in Nim. This may even be a killer feature > for Nim because the current solutions are just plain crap. and @Varriount: > The old installer used NSIS, which is a headache to deal with (the installer > is built using the NSIS language, which closely resembles assembly and a > declarative language). > > Anyway, does anyone know some alternative that we might try out? I know that > we've tried WiX (too much XML), NSIS (too much assembly), and Inno (way, way > too much programming needed). Any others? So (just trying to understand and see if I could help here), the problem has to do with the software used to build the installers, right? I could so some research in this and see if something more user friendly could be used, taking in consideration that new features/components should be easily integrated. Dom's idea of creating a setup generator in Nim is far the coolest. Surely, it will add maintainance of the generator itself, but sounds worth it since it would taylored to Nim's needs (and, of course, a reason of pride for Nim itself). > The alternative ways to install Nim might grow a new feature (e.g. choose > between Aporia and VS Code Plugin) I personally think that Aporia should have a separate setup. True, for the first-timer it's nice to have a single setup, but they are two separate products and they might update at different intervals. If we are speaking of an installer "the Windows way" it should then also provide an uninstaller, and the catch might be that to uninstall just Aporia you end up uninstalling Nim or, worst, the manually overwritten files (in one or the other) get busted because of an update that affects both.
