[rfc] Windows Installer for bzr

[Martin Pool]

On 29 Nov 2005, Alexander Belchenko <bialix at ukr.net> wrote:
> In the december I plan to post to the list statistic of the site 
> bzr.onembedding.com. Short summary is: people very interested in windows 
> installer, because this file was downloaded 3 times more than src archive.
> 
> I was tested on Linux creation of windows installer exe, and it works 
> well. So main developers of bzr can use my setup script & co for 
> creating official windows installer for python. I think I could start to 
> work on setup packet (scripts and instructions) for compiling windows 
> installer, if you plan to release next bzr version with windows installer.

I'd be happy to have that for the next release; either I can run a
script to create it or you can build it and i'll put it on the official
site.

I'll try to test your windows installer soon.

> I'd like to hear some comments about installer.
> 
> Now my installer create bzr.bat batch file during installation, but I 
> think that creation exe launcher based on Fredrik Lundh's exemaker[1] 
> will be more useful. What you think about? And about licensing of 
> exemaker? I read license but I'm float in license details.

From the description on the web this looks good.  I think the licence is
OK.

> Second improvements for windows installer could be creation some sort of 
> documentation for bzr in html form. Later this documentation could be 
> compiled to CHM form because CHM (compiled help by Microsoft) is 
> standard de-facto for windows applications. I'm not sure that CHM can be 
> compiled on native Linux, may be in Wine emulator.

James Blackwell is cleaning up bzr_man.py and making it include the
complete help text.  I hope we can generalize that to also produce html
or chm.

> Third improvements could be creation entry in Start -> Programs folder. 
> I'm thinking about including in windows bzr some sort of bzr shell (e.g. 
> from bzrtools, but shell from bzrtools is not very usable at windows at 
> this moment). In future here may be GUI front-end?

Some kind of Windows gui would be great, in the long term.

> What you think about windows installer?
> Is community interested in statistics of bzr.onembedding.com or I should 
> send this info directly to Martin or Robert?

Feel free to post it.

-- 
Martin
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