Windows installer - beta release

[Duncan Coutts]

On Wed, 2009-04-22 at 10:34 +0000, Mikhail Glushenkov wrote:
> Hi Bulat,
> 
> Bulat Ziganshin <bulat.ziganshin at ...> writes:
> 
> > 1) afair, you use nsis? installer size too large, adding this line to
> > .nsi should make it twice smaller:
> > 
> > SetCompressor /SOLID lzma
> 
> Thanks, I'll use that!
> 
> > 2) i propose to make default installation directory both for ghc and
> > extra libs the same, something like c:\haskell (if it's impossible to
> > install into c:\program files\haskell)
> 
> Program Files\Haskell is what cabal-install uses by default. 

And I think the existing ghc installer puts this directory (or perhaps
it's the /bin subdir) on the %PATH%.

> I decided to use $SYSTEMDRIVE\ghc for GHC just in case it has
> objections to being run from a directory with spaces in it.

There is no problem with it being run from a directory with spaces. The
only problem is building it with a --prefix set to a dir with spaces, or
if the source tarball is in a dir with spaces. The existing installers
for ghc install to program files/ghc I think. You might like to double
check that.

I think as far as possible we should be consistent with the existing ghc
installer. Note also that

> If there's a demand for "Install only for the current user"
> feature, then the only safe choice is $HOME. For example, at my
> school Windows machines are configured so that ordinary users
> can't write to C:\.

Does the new installer let you specify a different location during
installation? Is that enough or do you also need to distinguish the case
of writing to the registry HKLM vs HKCU? What does the existing ghc
installer do?

Duncan