Standard plugin installer

[gexi]

This is less a wishlist to sub and more of a request to plugin developers:

I've noticed that some of the plugins have a slick installer and others consist of a zipfile just containing the plugins or skin files. Would it be possible to write a generic plugin installer that could wrap around a standard zip file (with all the paths relative to devnz or gbpvr) and install it? At the least would it be possible to have a standard format for plugin directory structure?

When upgrading all the plugins from v96 to v98 it was a tedious task to carefully look in all the zip files, make sure common files weren't overwritten with older versions, and make sure the paths were right when it was unzipped. I imagine the same would be true for a user who wanted to add several plugins at a time.

Maybe I could help with an effort to repackage all the manual plugins to a standard format as a start? I think this would help new users install plugins more easily.

[Fatman_do]

I had considered revising some of the somewhat inactive plugin zip files to at least be structured as if files were unzipped to the gbpvr folder. No common library files should be included in any zip files other than the library download pages. An installer program can include them as long as they don't overwrite newer versions.

I even wrote some guidelines on the subject.

[23skidoo]

Is there a decent free package out there that even approaches the features of InstallShield (full-blown, or the one that comes with Visual Studio)?

NSIS works fine, but lordy. In this day and age? lol

[Fatman_do]

I use this to help me out with NSIS.

http://hmne.sourceforge.net/

[reven]

yeah i use that too, but nsis is like working with assembly, all registers etc, not a very nice language.

powerful, just not all that easy to work with (well if you're trying to do some complex things, working with xml, downloading additional packages, editing .bat files etc)

[Fatman_do]

I found a plugin that helped with xml manipulation. I use it to set the active skin in the config.xml file.

[stefan]

Yeah... I remember back when I had to work with it... it became quite a large script before I was done And it took a time to get into the language... I've never done any assembly before, so it was a new way of thinking for me...

[stefan]

I did try izpack first... it was easier to work with, but it had some limitations (if I could only remember what it was...) that forced me to start over with another software (nsis).

[stefan]

now I remember... I had to write some custom things to the registry (not the usual "last version installed in directory X", and I wasn't able to do that with izpack... for "standard" installations, I figure it is quite ok...

[reven]

i did consider writing my own in c#, just a little app that had a embedded .zip file or something with all the files and extract them manually, then i could just use the .net framework to do all the complex stuff all OO style so piss easy to work with.

but then i couldnt be arsed but i may do one down the road