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standardnotes
[Windows] Needs a machine install option
Please either make the installer a machine-wide install or provide an option for that. Without one, StandardNotes can't really be deployed, and I can't complete a Chocolatey package.
The multiuser.nsh script/library allows NSIS installers to use an /allusers switch. Or it looks like electron-builder has a perMachine option that would allow you to do this.
Can you talk about how this feature is used? I'm not too familiar with the distinction between machine-wide and single-account installs.
A user install does not require admin rights and goes into the user's profile and is not visible or accessible to any other users of the computer. It is sometimes possible to adjust the location to a common area, but often either other users encounter weird problems or users can affect all other users (which is not good). These user installs are the bane of many enterprise sysadmins.
A "proper" machine install puts the executable/libraries into one of the "Program Files" directories, and any (optional, please!) shortcuts (Start menu or Desktop) into public locations for all users to access. Each user has personal settings for the application within their own profile, but can't break the application for other users. This is how the vast majority of software deployed for business/enterprise is done.
A machine install a strong suggestion (although I suppose not a requirement) for Chocolatey packages. I can say from experience that the few Chocolatey packages I've used with user-installs drive me crazy. Chocolatey claims it's installed, but only one user can access it. The installing account is my admin account (as Chocolatey wants to run as admin) while my user account is out in the cold.
Here is MS description of the difference between user and machine installs with regards to .MSI installers. Not everything applies in this case, but you get the idea.
Hope that helps.
Gotcha. In that case it definitely makes sense to at least present a choice. Although the documentation for electron-builder is confusing here:
Boolean - Whether to show install mode installer page (choice per-machine or per-user) for assisted installer. Or whether installation always per all users (per-machine).
So which is it—presents a choice, or whether it defaults to all users? Perhaps it presents a choice + defaults to machine-wide. Will test out this option for the next release.
Hi. There have been a few releases since this was opened. I assume this wasn't resolved since it isn't mentioned in the notes. Any progress?
I had to defer it because the documentation mentioned it had something to do with a web installer (which we don't use). And the recent releases were high priority so I didn't want to risk any new behavior with installation. I don't want to make any promises for which version we'll look at this for, but this is still in mind.
I don't know much about building installers, but the original link for the Electron-Builder NSIS target options says "These options also applicable for Web installer" which would imply to me that you could still do it.
Any progress on a per-machine install?
Thanks.
No progress yet. We're in the middle of some serious internals rewriting/upgrading so we don't want to rock the distribution/packaging boat at the same time. But it's definitely something we want to get to!
It's been awhile, and I've got people asking about the Chocolatey package. Any progress at all towards a system-wide install?
Wanted to throw in a vote of interest in this feature as we use Chocolatey for software installation.
It's been awhile, and I've got people asking about the Chocolatey package. Any progress at all towards a system-wide install?
Not at the moment as the dev team is wrapping up another release, but this is something they'd still like to get to as more time opens up for it in the future.
Well, we've all traveled to the future. 😁 Any chance of moving this off the (way) back burner?
Hi @teknowledgist, glad to have you here with us. Currently this request remains on the backburner, but we hope to get to working on this at some point in the future.