Re: Emacs Installer for MS Windows

[Peter 'Luna' Runestig]

On 2004-08-06 19:07, Peter 'Luna' Runestig wrote:
> As per http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2003-09/msg00358.html
> I wrote some C code some time ago, to create such an installer package,
> as part of the normal build process. I thought it to be really cool, but
> it seemed I was the only one excited, so the development of my MSI
> Toolkit kind of died out. I still use it for making installer packages
> of stuff like Mozilla, OpenSSL, Perl, Emacs though, take a look at
> http://ftp.runestig.com/pub/ if you're curious.

Since this thread seems to be really popular, I can't resist, pluging
myself again:

Here you have a free Emacs installer for Windows, based on CVS 2004-08-25:
ftp://www.runestig.com/pub/emacs/Emacs-21.3.50-20040825.msi
http://www.runestig.com/pub/emacs/Emacs-21.3.50-20040825.msi

Yes, to install MSI (Windows Installer) packages, you have to be "admin"
of your system. As apparent from my previous postings about that, I
thought that to be a minor problem; who is not an admin of their Windows
box? (I guess the one who's using someone else's Windows box) But I
learned that that was a crucial thing.

Anyway, I think this is at least an option to consider, if you want an
Emacs installer for Windows. I would say that the Windows Installer is
the de-facto standard to install stuff on Windows; I'd say 9 out of 10
(or even more) commercial software packages uses it. It blends right in
with Active Directory, e.g. you can install Emacs on every Windows PC in
your domain automaticly, out-of-the-box.

What I think is cool about my code, is that it's just that; C text code
(free of course), that creates the installer package (which is actually
a database of information for "msiexec.exe" to interpret), as part of
the normal build process (using the Platform SDK anyway). The binary MSI
file above, were created from my CVS checkout per 2004-08-25, like this:

patch -T -p1 < emacs-20030920-msi-20030923.patch
cd nt
configure.bat
nmake bootstrap
nmake info
nmake msi

Done!

But as I said before, it seems I'm the only one, thinking this is cool.
So the MSI generating code, in "makemsi.c", can be improved, especially
when it comes to upgrading possibilities; I'm aware of that, and I can
fix it, if there's any "demand" for it. OTOH, it works quite fine as it
is, but you have to uninstall the package, before you install a newer one.

Cheers,
- Peter
-- 
Peter 'Luna' Runestig (fd. Altberg), Sweden <address@hidden>
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