Standard install.exe application.

[takev]

I was working on std::terminate handler and was looking in creating minidump files for doing postmortem debugging.

Microsoft recommends running the minidump creation in a separate process, since the current process is likely in a state where it would be unable to create a minidump on its own.

I was thinking it may be possible to make a standard application, like the uninstall.exe that you would always install with your application to help with things:

• Helper for terminate handler:
  • Displays a crash report, including stack traces.
  • Create a minidump file from the crashing process.
  • Ask the user to upload information to the server for post mortem debugging.
  • Ask to relaunch the application.
• A watchdog which can monitor the process for a crash, on crash it will do the same as the terminate handler.
• Overwrite files and relaunch executable
  • The original process downloads updates then calls repair.exe and exits itself.
  • repair.exe will do the overwriting of the original process with the new update, and possibly do this with data files as well.
  • repair.exe launches the original process again.
• If the user launches install.exe manually
  • Download a list of versions of the application, based on a repair.ini file.
  • Ask the user if he wants to upgrade / downgrade / repair the installation
  • Download the manifest, check checksums, download files.
  • Ask the user to launch the application.
• Maybe this can be the same executable as a <name>_install.exe which is a downloadable file from the web.
  • The application's .zip installer may be embedded in the executable.
  • Application is build against static crt: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-runtime-library/crt-library-features?view=msvc-170
  • All resources, shaders, theme and fonts are also embedded.