Windows DMD installer

[Stewart Gordon]

Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
<snip>
> In my opinion, the Windows installer's goal is somewhat different than a 
> Linux installer. I've heard many people say that they'd love a simple 
> installer that installs them everything including a build tool, IDE, 
> debugger, etc., so perhaps it should allow installing more than just the 
> barebones DMD.

Perhaps?  Definitely, if you're going to bother with an installer at 
all.  At least, I can't see any point in having an installer for 
barebones DMD.

> However, we don't want to include things that many people 
> won't use either. Therefore, I was thinking that the installer could 
> download and install components (libraries, text editors/IDEs or plugins 
> for them, build tools) from the web if the user ticks some corresponding 
> checkboxes.

How is the set of libraries that your installer can install going to be 
maintained?  Will anyone be able to contribute?

The ideal, however, is to have it so that the user can paste in the URL 
of any D library and the installer'll install it.  However, until and 
unless we can standardise how to package a library for download, the 
user would have to guess whether the installer supports the particular 
library's way of doing it.

> Further ideas:
> * support Windows' "change" option in Add/Remove Programs to allow 
> removing, reinstalling and updating components
> * when installing an editor, associate .d files with it
> * adjust PATH to include DMD and any selected build tools
> * adjust DMD search paths to point to any additional libraries (Tango, 
> DSSS etc.)
<snip>

Why not install all third-party libraries under a common base path?

Stewart.