Consider using winget to distribute packages on Windows

[jonahbeckford]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/winget/

(Feedback from discuss.ocaml's v0.4.0 release announcement)

[jonahbeckford]

Only potential problem is the package must support a non-interactive install per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/package/winget-validation#submission-expectations.

The Git and the Visual Studio parts are the only interactive parts, but hopefully those can be modeled as dependencies in winget.

[jonahbeckford]

https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/for-windows-users-is-winget-now-a-standard-command/5564?u=ericgt has useful information as well.

[jonahbeckford]

Only potential problem is the package must support a non-interactive install per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/package/winget-validation#submission-expectations.

That has been fixed by #3

[jonahbeckford]

Making task list:

• Create package manifest for 1.0.0, including dependencies for Visual Studio and Git. Precise versions of Visual Studio may make this impossible
• Edit bump2version and sign.sh so package manifest is updated every version
• Test package manifest in CI (Vagrant)
• When Opam is part of winget (confer: @dra27) the DKML winget package needs to use Opam as a dependency
• Submit to Microsoft

[jonahbeckford]

Note: With winget I can model Visual Studio Build Tools > x.y.z, but not exact versions that are compatible. Also, you should not have to install Visual Studio Build Tools if you have Visual Studio 2019 Enterprise (etc.).

So modeling the Visual Studio dependencies is not good. The lack of exact versions may mean someone will get an incompatible Visual Studio Build Tools that doesn't work with OCaml. That is actually a bug with OCaml though, not winget or DKML.

[jonahbeckford]

Open items that arose during first winget PR microsoft/winget-pkgs#69112 :

• The version is coming through as dev instead of the Opam version 1.0.0. It may be better to just use bump2version inside a version.ml file instead of probing with dune-build-info.

These will be fixed in v1.0.1.

[jonahbeckford]

Okay, the final winget problem seems to be a 2hr install limit. Without running in 2hr the winget CI will auto-fail the PR. Otherwise winget installs successfully.

• Will resubmit after install time is reduced to substantially under 2hr (including Visual Studio Build Tools and Git)

[jonahbeckford]

Added to winget at microsoft/winget-pkgs#92477

Announced at https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-diskuv-ocaml-1-1-0-windows-winget-setup-dkml/11077/4?u=jbeckford

Closing.