Support multiple installer/bundle types per platform

[FabianLars]

Now with the introduction of .deb updater support our current json schema really shows its limits. It would also be a valuable addition for Windows though because support msi and exe sometimes makes sense (or at least so i was told).

About the Static JSON response changes required:
Duplicate object keys are seemingly not well supported (understandibly since the specs highly discourage it) so i guess that's sadly out.

I feel like overloading the current object keys like x86_64-windows-nsis is a bit ugly but honestly not the worst.

Alternatively we could provide basically schema version 2 and use an array instead of an object, example:

{
  // Maybe rename platforms to better reflect what the array actually contains
  "platforms": [
    {
      "os": "windows",
      "arch": "x86_64",
      "bundleType": "nsis",
    },
    {
      "os": "windows",
      "arch": "x86_64",
      "bundleType": "wix",
    }
  ]
}

[FabianLars]

Starting to work on this. After a meeting with chip and tillmann it looks like the x86_64-windows-nsis approach makes the most sense. The logic i have in mind looks like this:

1. If dev sets target use this
2. If response only contains x86_64-windows, use this
3. If response contains x86_64-windows-nsis, use this for nsis installs
4. If response contains x86_64-windows-nsis and x86_64-windows use the first one for nsis and the latter one for wix
5. I forgot

Any feedback on that?

One open question is: should it straight up fail if the response only contains x86_64-windows-nsis with the app being installed with wix or should the updater ignore the -nsis part if there's no other x86_64-windows/-* key and just install nsis over wix?

• imo it should fail with TargetNotFound

[Legend-Master]

If response contains x86_64-windows-nsis and x86_64-windows use the first one for nsis and the latter one for wix

Shouldn't it be NSIS checks for x86_64-windows-nsis and fallback to x86_64-windows while Wix checks for x86_64-windows-wix and fallback to x86_64-windows?

should it straight up fail if the response only contains x86_64-windows-nsis with the app being installed with wix or should the updater ignore the -nsis part if there's no other x86_64-windows/-* key and just install nsis over wix?

An extra field containing a condition so the decision can be made from the new update instead of relying on the older updater would be nice, but I honestly hate logics written in custom languages so I don't know

Or just fail would be fine, if people want to install anyways, just use x86_64-windows (feels so confusing to me to be honest but I guess something like this is unavoidable for things to be backward compatible, some good documentations would probably help with this)

[FabianLars]

Shouldn't it be NSIS checks for x86_64-windows-nsis and fallback to x86_64-windows while Wix checks for x86_64-windows-wix and fallback to x86_64-windows?

Yes, poor phrasing but that's what I meant

[kandrelczyk]

Hi,

I had a look at the code and it's pretty clear so I will give implementing this a try. It will take me some time as it's the first time I will be touching this plugin so if anyone will start working on this again let me know.
@FabianLars can I reach out on discord with potential questions regarding environment setup and development or are there better channels?

[FabianLars]

Awesome! Happy to hear. And no worriws, take your time :)

We only have discord and github so I assume discord is the better choice for this (but whatever you prefer)