SDK Included in Installer

[sethjackson]

Well I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not, but here goes. I'm wondering if the SDK could be included in the next RC of C::B.
I think it would be easier to use this way. I'm not saying that it should be forced on the user to install the SDK, but merely given the option if they desire to install it. Also if you use Windows you have to download another app that can decompress .tar.gz files this really isn't a big deal because 7-zip is free and it will decompress .tar.gz files This way people won't have to download three different things the C::B installer, the SDK, and possibly a file archiver. Maybe this is a bad idea, but I thought I would get it out there.  :wink:

[takeshimiya]

Given that perhaps 20% of users develop actually for C::B, and most of them compile from CVS anyway, I don't think it's worth the effort (moreover, there are people on dial up, so you must keep the size small).

[David Perfors]

It hink it is a good idea, but indeed you also need to keep it small :? perhaps you should use an other format for the SDK (zip?)

[sethjackson]

I agree with keeping size small because I used to have dial-ip . Anyways maybe the SDK could be at least in .zip form, if not included in the installer.

[takeshimiya]

I think .tar.bz2 it's better than .zip or .tar.gz as it compresses more (specially small files ie. source code), and it's rather a very common format today in the sourceforge projects. And even for windows, most programs can open them (ie. 7-zip, WinRAR, etc).

But I've noticed that most projects on sf.net use double releases, most of them release in both formats, .tar.bz2 and .zip, and some are distributing now in .7z also.

[David Perfors]

If needed I am willing to help releasing the SDK in different formats...

[phlox81]

It would make more sense to create Packages, which can be installed under %code blocks%/.
So if you need the SDK, or a Compiler, you download the package, and install or copy it...

[David Perfors]

We can use devpacks for that...

[Florianx]

if you want to make the setup smaller, you should perhaps use NSIS as installer.

[sethjackson]

Yeah NSIS is awesome.

[thomas]

I agree, NSIS is really great.

However there are at least three good reasons against using it:

1. The major benefit of NSIS it is the builtin LZMA compression, which is very superior.
    Recent versions of Inno Setup have that, too, and the Code::Blocks installer already uses it.
    The only possible gains are thus due to the installer's stub size, i.e. neglegible.
2. The present setup with InnoSetup works. There is no actual reason ot spend time
    in creating a new setup (at the risk of introducing an error).
3. The developers are comfortable with Inno Setup, this is not necessarily true for NSIS.
    They might actually have to spend time learning a different syntax.

[mandrav]

Thomas is right on everything he said.

if you want to make the setup smaller, you should perhaps use NSIS as installer.

Have you created a similar C::B setup with NSIS and you 've seen a difference in size?
Or did you read somewhere that NSIS can produce smaller setups and you 're reproducing it here?

[thomas]

On the other hand side, you could of course make a NSIS installer script (wait until RC2 is out, though) and present it to Yiannis.

If you present him with an actual working, functionally identical version of a NSIS install script which produces an installer that is indeed 200-300k smaller, then it might really be worth to consider migrating.

[mandrav]

Right, I 'm not bashing NSIS in any way here.

[Florianx]

Have you created a similar C::B setup with NSIS and you 've seen a difference in size?
Or did you read somewhere that NSIS can produce smaller setups and you 're reproducing it here?

I have used NSIS in a few projects now, its really small. The installer (without data) ist normally smaller than 100kB.

I have created an nsis-script with basic futures and one language (english) for cvs head (a few days old).
It includes all normal plugins, but not the ones in the contrib-diir.
The installer is 3.02 MB. (11,9MB data + 87kB installer compressed to 25,1%)
Whats the size of the InnoSetup install.exe?