As a xoder preparing for workshop I want to install packages by double-clicking package files so that the full PC preparation cycle is clear

[nkrkv]

Rationale

A XOD workshop or lesson teacher often meets confusion trying to prepare machines of all participants in advance. A typical scenario is when PC has XOD IDE installed without any hardware packages (like Arduino AVR). Trying to download and install the package during the lesson, often with a slow internet connection, burns precious time.

There are two common scenarios we should support:

• The teacher asks the participants to prepare their personal laptops in advance
• The teacher prepares several classroom PCs in series

User story

• When I open the downloads page I see a few “Optional Packages”
• I download and install the IDE as usual
• I click the link named “Arduino AVR 1.8.3-1 (for Uno, Mega, Nano, Micro, Leonardo, and other ATmega AVR based boards)”
• A file with .xodw extension is downloaded
• I double click the file when the download is complete and XOD IDE opens
• XOD IDE asks if I want to install the Arduino AVR 1.8.3-1 package to C:\Users\Bob\xod
• I click OK and see a success message a few moments later

How to implement

We introduce a new file type, .xodw. It’s a zip-file with the custom extension. Inside the archive, we put a subset of workspace and a manifest file. For example:

manifest.json
__packages__/
  extra.txt
  packages/
    arduino/
      hardware/
        avr/
          1.6.23/
            ...
      tools/
        ...

The manifest.json contains the fields:

• name — to present to a user
• description — to present to a user
• version — to present to a user
• platform — to verify OS compatibility

Acceptance criteria

• [ ] I can hit File → Add Workspace Package and select the .xodw file
• [ ] A dialog box appears and I can confirm and has the package installed as described above
• [ ] Contents of the current extra.txt and those inside the package get merged
• [ ] An error is shown if I try to install a package made for another OS
• [ ] File associations for *.xodw are created when building a distro