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Spec: Native Installers

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peterflynn edited this page Aug 17, 2012 · 3 revisions

Native Installer Proposal

This describes the plans for Bracket's initial pass at implementing native installers. See these users stories: Mac DMG and Win installer. This spec may evolve as we refine the Brackets install experience down the road.

General

  • Separate downloads per platform
  • Folder structure of the brackets repo part of the installed files is identical to the folder structure in Git.
  • Future versions install alongside older versions (they do not update/overwrite the old version). All versions share the same preferences store, but users must manually copy over any extensions they had installed in the older version.
  • Uninstalling deletes any extensions the user has installed. (Unless they used ln on Mac, which some extensions do recommend).
  • New menu item that opens the extensions/user folder in Finder/Explorer.
  • Unlike first launch today, brackets-shell doesn't prompt for the /src folder.
  • On first launch, Brackets opens an HTML readme file (instead of opening its own source code, as today). The source code of the HTML file acts as a human-readable intro.
  • All text in installer / EULA is localized for French, based on OS locale.

Mac

  • Download is a DMG file (disk image) created with the DropDMG tool
  • Opening the DMG displays a localized EULA
  • All Brackets files are contained in the .app package (so the DMG contains only one item).
  • User installs the standard way, dragging the .app onto /Applications. A shortcut and background image in the DMG make this easier.
  • The .app package name includes the release number, to ensure it doesn’t overwrite older versions (and any extensions therein) -- see bullet above.
  • Uninstalling works the usual Mac way: just drag the .app out of /Applications into the trash. The preferences store (which lies outside the .app) are not cleaned up, just like most other Mac apps.
  • Visual assets required: DMG icon; DMG background image

Win

  • Download is an MSI generated with Wix (open-source, XML-driven installer generation technology from Microsoft)
  • Installer shows EULA; no other options required
  • Adds a Start menu shortcut
  • Uninstall via OS Add/Remove Programs dialog. Removes shortcut and entire install folder.
  • Installed folder structure is similar to today's ZIP distros
  • Users will get a UAC prompt when manually dragging files into the extensions folder, and extension source code will not be editable in situ (due to permissions).
  • Visual assets required: ~493x312 px dialog background for first/last installer pagers (all but the leftmost ~150px must be solid white); and ~493x58 px banner background for intermediate installer pages

Out of scope / future

  • Installer/app is not signed
    • On Mountain Lion, users will be unable to run Brackets without changing an OS setting or performing a one-time workaround (right-click, choose Open, confirm warning dialog).
    • On Windows, users will see a slightly more prominent warning dialog than usual at install time.
    • Both of these issues exist with our current plain-ZIP distros too -- not installer-specific.
  • Extensions will be located in the install folder. In the future, we should use a user-specific folder.
  • Installer built from raw source code (no additional build/merge steps)
  • Brackets will not warn users if run directly out of the DMG (on Mac). Some apps do this, or even offer to automatically copy themselves to /Applications.
  • No rigorous build/version numbering required -- custom name/location for each release is enough. (May be needed for the update notification feature, however).
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