I note that I have installed several Smalltalk systems under Windows
without once having to touch PowerShell.
I further note that I installed the latest version of R (4.0.0) for Windows:
Just the usual download/run/yes installer may change things/setup clicks.
No PowerShell.
I also installed the latest SageMath. The first choice for that is a
VirtualBox image,
but a traditional installer is one click away.
Same thing. Clickety-clickety and no PowerShell in sight.
I tried to like PowerShell. I really did. Got a bunch of books, read
'em, played with it.
You'd have to use it a LOT before it started making sense, and I had
other maddened
grizzly bears to stun.
On Sun, 26 Apr 2020 at 13:01, Anthony Clayden
@lonetiger, I take it you've never had to support software installs on shared machines, or students' machines where you can't be too sure of the config?
The reasons against using powershell and curl (or equiv) I would have thought are pretty obvious: you don't know what you're getting/what it might be downloading. You might mis-type some command and cause havoc on your machine or on your network.
With Hugs you download the packed-up .exe; you disconnect from the internet and run virus checks; you run the install while your machine is still in quarantine. With Hugs install you (usually) don't need to go into Admin mode.
Just because some long-winded process is "completely standard on Windows", doesn't mean it's fit for use. That's a general learning about stuff from Microsoft.
AntC
➢ Then I have to know what powershell.exe is, use an administrative prompt, and enter scary commands in it.
Powershell has been the standard shell in Windows for well over the past decade. Every single script from Microsoft or third parties come with powershell for automation. It’s understandable that you may not know it since your primary platform isn’t Windows. But it’s been included in every single Windows version for the past 13 years.
An administrative prompt is nothing different than running sudo or clicking on that installer that you *assumed* not to be scary because you didn’t see the actions it was performing. That scary looking command is nothing but a curl command allowing the one time execution of a script from a remote source. As in a script that’s not physically on your machine.
So what exactly makes this scary? Is it because
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
Is more verbose than
curl -sSL https://path.to.some.script/ | sh
or because the technologies used while completely standard on Windows aren’t known to the casual user?
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