Create installer for Windows

[hohwille]

As a IDEasy user, I want to install the product via a graphical installer so that I can easily be guided through the installtion with only few clicks.

Acceptance criteria

• Installer first screen shows the license of IDEasy with scrollbar and the user can read it and either click Cancel or Accept & Continue. Cancel aborts the installation and Accept & Continue proceeds to the second screen.
• Installer shows second screen to choose the installation location ($IDE_ROOT) with and Install button at the bottom and above a description with the following options with radio-button selection .
  • C:\projects (pre-selected default)
  • D:\projects (if D: drive is present, a permanent disc like HDD or SSD and has at least 1GB free disc space)
  • custom with ability to browse to a custom folder. If this option is selected the Install button gets disabled (grayed out), the custom folder has to be chosen and the path must exist and not contain spaces or special characters (only [a-zA-Z0-9]+ for folders). Also the path must not be longer than 32 characters. Only if all these criteria are met the Install button gets enabled.
• When the user has clicked on Install the installation is started:
  • Contents are installed to $IDE_ROOT (so we have $IDE_ROOT/_ide/bin/ideasy.exe, etc.)
  • Environment variable (user) PATH is extended with value of ;$IDE_ROOT\_ide\bin
  • Environment variable (user) IDE_ROOT is set in Windows to value of $IDE_ROOT.
  • The file %USERPROFILE%\.bashrc is created if not existing and we append the line alias ide="source $IDE_ROOT/_ide/bin/ide" where $IDE_ROOT is the resolved path in MSYS syntax (e.g. /c/projects instead of C:\projects) followed by the line source $IDE_ROOT/_ide/completion and finally the line ide.
  • Registry entries are added for Explorer integration
• The installer features uninstallation via standard Windows Settings that reverts all changes made during the installation.

For the registry entries see old devonfw-ide sources:

• https://github.com/devonfw/ide/blob/master/scripts/src/main/resources/system/windows/windows-terminal/devon-wt-gitbash.reg
• https://github.com/devonfw/ide/blob/master/scripts/src/main/resources/system/windows/windows-terminal/devon-wt-cmd.reg
• https://github.com/devonfw/ide/blob/master/scripts/src/main/resources/system/windows/windows-terminal/devon-wt-ps.reg
• See also https://github.com/devonfw/ide/blob/master/scripts/src/main/resources/system/windows/windows-terminal/README.asciidoc

Suggested solution for the installer is to create an MSI package from the results of the current windows package with the features specified above.

Note

I removed the suggested feature:

• Installer checks that Git and git-bash are installed. If not, an error Popup is shown and the installation cancelled.

We will solve this later. We still have to decide if this will be solved in our IDEasy (CLI) in Java or it should go to the OS specific installer parts.

[hohwille]

Example Screenshot of License Agreement from Git:

[KianRolf]

WiX Toolset

advantages:

• highly customizable
• predefined libraries
• very flexible
• custom actions

disadvantages:

• requires XML knowledge
• not GUI
• inadequate documentation
• hard to learn

helpful links:

• official website: https://wixtoolset.org/docs/intro/
• custom actions: https://www.add-in-express.com/creating-addins-blog/create-wix-custom-actions/
• introduction: https://entwickler.de/dotnet/einfuhrung-in-windows-installer-xml-das-wix-toolset

[KianRolf]

If anyone picks up this ticket again, they might want to check the two linked draft pull requests

[hohwille]

Was autoclosed by PR #978
Reopening since not entirely done:

• test on nightly build
• integrate into release build
• use correct version in metadata instead of hardcoded 1.0.0?

[hohwille]

I tested the SNAPSHOT MSI from the nightly build I just ran and it fails:

As always on Windows you only get the information that there was an error but not what the actual error was (no details).
So was the native image (ideasy.exe) not included in the MSI package and could therefore not be called?
Or was it included and properly called but it failed with some error I cannot see?