Installers for projects

[trappitsch]

One enhancement I really want for box is the capability of not just creating packages, but also to create installers. This would be especially interesting for GUIs.

The idea is to include a next box installer top-level command to directly create the installers on various platforms.

This issue is definitely not well thought out yet and any comments/ideas would be highly appreciated!

Linux:

Package the program into an AppImage for GUIs?

For CLIs: An installer bash script that simply copies the binary to a specified folder and makes it executable.

Windows:

On windows, NSIS can be used to package a nice looking installer fairly automatically. This will require that NSIS is installed on the windows machine, but then, it should work fairly straight forward.

For CLIs on windows, I don't really have an idea yet :)

macos:

applecrate looks very interesting to package CLIs.

For GUIs: Create a dmg file somehow... well, need to think about this more.

[trappitsch]

Minimum requirement for v0.2.0:

• docs!
• box installer command checks for OS and GUI/non-GUI and creates installer or throws a warning that not supported yet
• CLI installer for Linux - a simple project_name.sh script to copy executable linux cli installer #40
• GUI Installer for Linux linux gui installer #41
• CLI installer for Windows windows cli installer #45
• GUI installer for Windows - Check that NSIS is available! installer windows gui #43

Would be nice to have but need help since I don't work on macos (or for later) - moved to a later release

• CLI installer, maybe with applecrate - see comment above (MacOS Installers #49)
• GUI installer (MacOS Installers #49)

[trappitsch]

Update on Linux GUI packaging:
Well, AppImages are really not made for this and are completely overkill. How about the following for an installer:

• same idea of a bash script for installer as for CLI
• We package the binary and the icon into the installer
• Bash script does the following:
  • ask user for default folder or for a folder to create for program
  • ask for where to put .desktop file
  • put program and icon into the correct location where user selected
  • put the desktop file in the user selected place
• Tests similar to what we had before, excpect now, we require an empty or non-existent folder in order to make what folders the user wants.

Again, this is all simple bash scripting, but it would put the binary where we want it and a Desktop file in the right place so the system can find our GUI.

[trappitsch]

With v0.2.0, this issue is 2/3 solved. Missing are the CLI and GUI installers for macOS...

[trappitsch]

For macOS - just a note for myself:

• applecrate to package CLI tools (see above)
• Manually create an .app bundle, see here: https://tmewett.com/making-macos-bundle-info-plist/
• Then create a dmg with https://github.com/create-dmg/create-dmg

This is currently in development on the macos_installers branch. idea is to first add teh functionality, then test it on a Mac, and then write the tests for it. As mentioned before, any help, especially with testing and deugging from mac users would be very much appreciated here!