I wrote simple tool that I am using to build MSI installer for Visual
Haskell. It will not be so hard to extend it to support Cabal. After
that it will be easy to prepare an installer for GHC with optional
libraries. Don't expect it to be ready for 6.6 release!
Cheers,
Krasimir
On 8/22/06, Jason Dagit
[snipped] For the windows installer, I imagine this working something like the cygwin or ms office installer. There could be a screen listing all the libraries and the installer itself comes in two flavors, either contains only the minimum (and uses the network to grab any additional) or the installer contains everything and lets the user select which packages to install (defaulting to everything).
Hi Karsmir,
I wrote simple tool that I am using to build MSI installer for Visual Haskell. It will not be so hard to extend it to support Cabal. After that it will be easy to prepare an installer for GHC with optional libraries. Don't expect it to be ready for 6.6 release!
Would it be possible to have it work for WinHugs as well? It would be nice if GHC/Hugs had some nice integration in this point. The other thing to think of is that Hugs and GHC both steal the .hs extension on Windows - and GHC's icon for .hs files is uglier than the Hugs one. Thanks Neil
Currently the tool is general enough to be used with Hugs or any other
project. You just need to have a prepared (template) MSI database and
the tool will add your files to it. What I tend to add is a special
mode where the tool will read your .cabal file and will automatically
detect which files have to be packaged.
Cheers,
Krasimir
On 8/24/06, Neil Mitchell
Hi Karsmir,
I wrote simple tool that I am using to build MSI installer for Visual Haskell. It will not be so hard to extend it to support Cabal. After that it will be easy to prepare an installer for GHC with optional libraries. Don't expect it to be ready for 6.6 release!
Would it be possible to have it work for WinHugs as well? It would be nice if GHC/Hugs had some nice integration in this point. The other thing to think of is that Hugs and GHC both steal the .hs extension on Windows - and GHC's icon for .hs files is uglier than the Hugs one.
Thanks
Neil
Hello Krasimir, Thursday, August 24, 2006, 6:15:17 PM, you wrote:
I wrote simple tool that I am using to build MSI installer for Visual Haskell. It will not be so hard to extend it to support Cabal. After that it will be easy to prepare an installer for GHC with optional libraries. Don't expect it to be ready for 6.6 release!
i don't develop it, so i can't complain, but just for case anyone can take it - msi installer uses MS lzx (cabarc) compression algorithm. there is a better compression algorithm, called lzma, which makes compressed GHC bundle about 20% smaller. one can either use MSI installer containing one large lzma archive unpakced to temp dir, or Nullsoft installer that supports lzma directly, to cut off size of installer. it's important for mans like me with modem access/paid traffic -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com
The usage of something else than cabarc isn't supported directly and
will require extra work. Is the lzma algorithm better than bz2? If I
have to use something better than cabarc I would prefer more popular
compression algorithm. For Visual Haskell the Nullsoft installer isn't
an option because it doesn't support the MSI merge modules.
Cheers,
Krasimir
On 8/24/06, Bulat Ziganshin
Hello Krasimir,
Thursday, August 24, 2006, 6:15:17 PM, you wrote:
I wrote simple tool that I am using to build MSI installer for Visual Haskell. It will not be so hard to extend it to support Cabal. After that it will be easy to prepare an installer for GHC with optional libraries. Don't expect it to be ready for 6.6 release!
i don't develop it, so i can't complain, but just for case anyone can take it - msi installer uses MS lzx (cabarc) compression algorithm. there is a better compression algorithm, called lzma, which makes compressed GHC bundle about 20% smaller. one can either use MSI installer containing one large lzma archive unpakced to temp dir, or Nullsoft installer that supports lzma directly, to cut off size of installer. it's important for mans like me with modem access/paid traffic
-- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com
Hello Krasimir, Friday, August 25, 2006, 10:49:50 AM, you wrote:
The usage of something else than cabarc isn't supported directly and will require extra work. Is the lzma algorithm better than bz2? If I
for compression of binary data (and most of windows distribution is executable), lzma is best, cabarc is second and bzip2 is far down. for compression of text data ppmd is best, lzma is slightly worser, and bz2 is again down with cabarc at the same level paying attention to the fact that cabarc and lzma are asymmetric algorithms (i.e. they use more resources on compression but less on decompression) i recommend to use one of them - it will result in faster decompression (and using much less memory compared to ppmd)
have to use something better than cabarc I would prefer more popular compression algorithm.
i think, popularity is not matter if the whole distribution will be unpacked to temporary directory before installation. MSI should support such facility. as a result, installer will be about 20% less in size - important for those of us who still pay their traffic you can download 7-zip program (that is archiver using lzma algorithm) at www.7-zip.com and try yourself to compress whole ghc installed tree: 7z a -r -mx9 archive -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com
participants (3)
-
Bulat Ziganshin -
Krasimir Angelov -
Neil Mitchell