Re: msi installer file?

[Adam Dinwoodie <adam@dinwoodie.org>]

On Wed, Mar 09, 2022 at 02:27:01PM -0500, Monica Parker wrote:
> Hi,
> I just want to know if there is an MSI installer file? If not, can one be
> created? Im trying to create a package for SCCM and it wont accept exe
> files.

There isn't, and I don't think it's likely that anyone here will create
one; I'm not very familiar with the requirements for MSI installers, but
I very strongly expect that converting Cygwin's current installer to
work as an MSI installer would be *a lot* of work, if it's possible at
all.

In particular, the Cygwin installer is really a tool for selecting from
over 10,000 separate packages, calculating the potentially-complex
dependencies between them, then downloading and installing each
individual requested component.

If you want to provide a Cygwin installer in an environment where MSI
packages are acceptable but users can't run any executables, I expect
your best bet might be to decide what set of packages you want to
provide, install those using the regular Cygwin installer, then bundle
up the resultant installation directory into an MSI yourself.  That's
not going to be trivial to get working reliably, and obviously users
will lose the ability to select their own packages or get updates
until/unless you repackage them, but it's the best idea I can think of.

(I'm not familiar with SCCM, but given just how many Windows installers
come as executables, I'd have expected any management system that wanted
to intstall anything more than a very tightly controlled set of
applications would need to handle .exe installers.  I know Microsoft are
keen to get more people offering applications through their storefront,
but they're also actively working on winget, which can and does handle
.exe installers...)