Re: GSoC project about binary packaging

[Patrick Noffke]

On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Anirudha Bose <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 8:19 PM, Patrick Noffke <address@hidden>
> wrote:
>>
> files in the installation directory. Can you provide a similar basic XML
> file to help me understand WiX?
>

A basic .wxs file is attached.  This will not provide any UI other
than a small box with a Cancel button.  I'll provide some basic UI
stuff later.

I have not tested this file yet (my mxe-build failed).  You will have
to edit the Source attributes to point to the files you want to put in
the installer, and add/remove any files that you want.  I just
included the main EXE, a couple Qt DLLs (though my earlier email for
using wixl-heat is a better approach for including lots of
dependencies), and some translation files (just placeholders).  I'm
not sure how translations are handled, or what they're named, so you
might just want to comment this one out for initial testing.

I generated fresh GUIDs on my machine using uuidgen.  The Package GUID
has a '*', which means let wixl or WiX generate it.

> We need some more features in the installer like checking for JRE, adding
> environment variables after the installation, letting the user choose
> between OpenBLAS and reference BLAS, and installing octave-forge packages.
> How do you propose to do these using WiX?
>

- Checking for JRE:  Based on another email thread about Java, is this
necessary?  Once you check for the JRE, what do you need to do?
- Adding environment variables:  Here's an example of updating the
PATH environment variable:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1931586/can-anyone-give-me-a-example-of-modifying-windows-environment-system-variables-i
Note the follow-up answer that says it needs to be part of a directory element.
- Choose between OpenBLAS and reference BLAS:  These should be written
as two separate components.  Then we can include a UI to allow
selecting one or the other (I'll help with that later).
- Installing octave-forge packages:  Same as with BLAS - make a
component per package, and provide a UI to select packages.  If a user
wants to go back later and modify the installed packages, this should
be possible through the control panel (select the "Modify" option).

Patrick