[Lazarus] cross-distro (and OS) app installation - what would you like?

[Vincent Snijders]

Graeme Geldenhuys schreef:
> On 20/01/2010, Vincent Snijders <vsnijders at vodafonevast.nl> wrote:
>>  It is editable in the text editor. But also by IS-Tool, which is more like
>> an IDE for inno setup scripts.
> 
> I took a second look at the lazarus.iss file to see how "install
> features/options" and there relationships are mapped in the INI file.
> 

The iss is not that important, a tool like IS-tool is, but without 
loosing the settings in a text format. IIRC Mac OS X pbuilder has a 
binary format, which is why I chose to use IceBerg as installer builder 
for Mac OS X.

> They seem to use one line with various options flattened out in that
> line that needs to be parsed. This is quite hard to read and follow
> (using a plain text editor). Like I said, I am not a big fan of XML,
> but in this case, I think XML would have been a better choice for Inno
> Setup, but maybe Delphi didn't have built-in XML support like FPC has
> now, hence the reason they used a INI file. As far as I understand,
> Inno Setup has been around for quite some time (probably around Delphi
> 4 or 5)
> 

In 2000 I would have chosen INI too.

> See my previous reply as to why I think, in the case of a setup
> configuration file, that XML is a better (and more easy to read and
> understand with a plain text editor) format.
> 
> 

Then the feature is:
A tool like IS-Tool, that is a graphical front end for the settings file 
in text format, in which all settings can be set, scripts can be edited, 
the package can be build *and* installed.

Vincent