ankitects
Offline installer
Please include an offline installer in addition to the online installer. Anki is an offline application and should be able to be installed offline.
How can you install the app if you're not connected to the internet? Or the installer to begin with? The app has to come from somewhere.
@brishtibheja Maybe from USB drive or CD? Apart from the sync feature (and it is optional), i don't see a reason to force Internet connection. Also it is rare for an opensource software to do so. I appreciate the work you guys put into Anki, but please consider a little more about users.
Many users in mainland China cannot complete the current online install because the launcher is blocked from reaching GitHub and PyPI. A Chinese-language write-up (https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/1927728002831216855) shows the only workaround is to hand-edit uv.toml to point at domestic mirrors, yet this step is undocumented and, as of commit dfbb7302e8620ac8b9488f5111fcd65268c449b8 (#4191), no longer works—users are forced to stay on old releases. Either an official offline package or clear instructions that allow the launcher to use alternative mirrors would solve the problem.
That'd help with the "PyPI blocked in China" problem as long as there are working mirrors, but doesn't allow downloading an install package once and then using it offline.
UV can install software and runtime environment to a specified folder - as long as Anki allows manual installation commands.
In other words, this can also be considered a method of building software packages locally.
I understand that switching the project to UV has many advantages, but we should not completely give up building local installation packages.
There is a need to install and launch software from a portable device.
Or, completely convert Anki into a project that can be installed from UV with just one command, like uv pip install "anki[full]", abandoning this useless launcher.
There are a whole lot of other problems with using an online installer like this, w.r.t. security. 3rd party sources might start serving different content at any time. Normally (well except for Windows perhaps) this is dealt with by standard package manager software that can check checksums, signatures, etc. When this is (partially) re-invented on app by app basis, the user has to either trust that this is all done correctly, or review every such mechanism.
Now, fortunately there is at least an AUR package that is mostly straightforward to verify, because PKGBUILD's follow a certain standard instead of reinventing every detail per app, building on the system package manager functionality for most of the mundane steps like "fetch this part and ensure it has not been tampered with". But outside of Arch Linux, one is really out of luck.
How can you install the app if you're not connected to the internet? Or the installer to begin with? The app has to come from somewhere.
In my country (Iran), there is severe internet censorship, and accessing GitHub and PyPI is not easy.
I have to use this version now: https://github.com/ankitects/anki/releases/download/25.02.7/anki-25.02.7-windows-qt6.exe
I can't agree more. Anki should provide a packaged application rather than letting users compile and run it locally
I can't agree more. Anki should provide a packaged application rather than letting users compile and run it locally
Absolutely! Having a ready-to-install version would make Anki much easier for everyone to use. On Windows, compiling programs is not common, and most applications are installed as offline packages.
Yes please release a installer offline for Anki. The online installer command line is complex to use.
