Add windows gui / msi installer [difficult]

[brson]

To complete the Rust installation experience on Windows we want to be installing rustup via an msi.

Make a proof-of-concept rustup msi installer that embeds libmultirust. The behavior of this msi will be heavily customized - all it does is the standard rustup install, but presented in a windowsy way. To start with it can be really simple:

• On installation, present a screen that says more-or-less what the console installer says now. Have install/cancel buttons.
• After they press install, go to another window that displays whatever status updates we reasonably can as the install is progressing.
• After install show another screen that indicates success.
• Register the uninstaller with windows so it works from the add/remove programs screen.

This will require a lot of refactoring of the existing install code to get it embedded in this new context.

Our options for GUI's will be limited but we can't use something heavy. I'm thinking either something rust-centric like conrod, or just a very thin win32 wrapper.

[retep998]

Depending on OpenGL for Conrod might not work very well if they don't have the GPU manufacturer drivers that provide OpenGL, or if they're using Windows in a VM.

[Diggsey]

We could just use Inno Setup... It will allow us to produce a GUI installer which can call out to the command line rustup behind the scenes, and it's configured declaratively, so we won't even need any non-rust code.

[brson]

@Diggsey Inno Setup does not produce msi's (I believe), and msi's are the delivery format people most expect and prefer.

Rust itself uses Inno to produce .exe installers but we don't advertise them because the .msi's are nicer.

[retep998]

If we use the Windows Installer stuff then that can provide a user interface for us.

[pravic]

@brson

and msi's are the delivery format people most expect and prefer.

.msi is a really big pain due to windows installer cache bloat :(

[vadimcn]

If it's just a window with some text and [Install]/[Cancel] buttons, the built-in msi UI will do just fine. Anything more complicated/dynamic than, say, the Rust installer, would be quite annoying to do in it, and in that case I would suggest going with WinForms/WPF.

I also want to note that invoking an .exe to perform the actual system changes (like mucking with the registry to modify PATH) goes against the "best MSI practices", but I guess we'd be fine with it for cross-platform consistency's sake?

[Diggsey]

@vadimcn Modifying the PATH would have to be done in a custom action anyway, even if .msi is used, so there's no real benefit in that regard. Aside from that, rustup doesn't actually make any changes to your system (even rustup itself goes in your user folder)

[vadimcn]

Modifying the PATH would have to be done in a custom action anyway, even if .msi is used,

Why? MSI has direct support for modifying environment vars.
But even when CAs are used, the recommended way is not to perform system changes directly, but rather to schedule them for execution by the MSI engine in elevated part of the install process (by adding ephemeral records to File/Registry/etc tables).

[brson]

@vadimcn I don't want to invoke an exe.

What I want to do is have the msi system call functions in the multirust dll to perform the installation actions, while presenting the UI people expect from an msi installer. Can we do that?

[vadimcn]

What I want to do is have the msi system call functions in the multirust dll to perform the installation actions, while presenting the UI people expect from an msi installer. Can we do that?

Yes, that is possible.
(This still counts as performing changes directly, though)

[nodakai]

In any cases, please keep supporting non-Administrator users installing Rust to somewhere under C:\Users\username or even C:\Users\Public

[Boddlnagg]

You may also try using WiX (http://wixtoolset.org/), it's a declarative way of creating a Windows Installer (msi) that can be heavily customized. It also says that it supports custom actions written in C++, so it shouldn't be too hard to use custom actions written in Rust. On the other hand, however, this might be too big of a non-Rust build system/dependency.