2006-05-14 01:46:43 UTC
Igor, if you're reading this thread, please reconsider this decision. That majority of users both on this forum and even on the Winamp.com forum do not feel that this is an issue. Personally, I think it's a wonderful feature, and as I stated in my previous comment, it's a large part of the reason I donated money to your fine project. As the previous poster stated (though not quite so eloquently), this "issue" is being caused by a vocal minority on the Winamp.com forum who don't seem to understand the purpose of an installer, nor what 7-zip actually does to create the .nsi file.
Almost ever other installer, ranging from old Wise for Windows to Windows Installer (MSI), offers SOME way to unpack files. For those that don't, such as Inno Setup, a third-party unpacker has been developed (see
http://innounp.sf.net/, another great utility that I quite often use) . Why is this capability so widespread? Because it makes life easier for A) power users, and B) administrators. As a user, I may want to quickly and temporarily use an application, without going through a full installation routine, making changes to the system, adding stuff to the registry, etc. By unpacking an installer (or preferably by just extracting a binary archive file if available), I can easily do that. As a concrete example, I've posted before that I use 7-zip as a component of one of my own programs. In order to update the 7-zip component, I'd have to download the latest NSIS installer, install it, copy over the program files directory, delete the uninstaller file(s), then uninstall it from my system. That a lot of unnecessary steps compared to downloading and unpacking, which is what I started doing when you began offering MSI installers.
As an administrator in a former job, my primary responsibility was application deployment. Now, enterprises often have a standard format that's either required or strongly preferred for deployment. In almost every case I've heard of, this is Windows Installer. Well, what happens if I want to deploy an app with an NSIS installer? Previously, I'd have to install it, figure out by hand what it does, create my own installation script, package it as a new MSI, then do some pretty extensive testing to make sure I didn't forget about anything. With the features in 7-zip 4.40, however, I can just unpack the files I need, reference the .nsi file to see what changes it's supposed to make, then I'm good to go.
I guess the closest analogy here would be the aforementioned innounp. It basically does the exact same thing for Inno Setup installers as 7-zip 4.40 does for NSIS installers; provide users the ability to extract files from the installer, and generate a new installer script for reference. innounp has been out for a couple years now, and as a regular visitor to the Inno Setup newsgroups, I can tell you that it hasn't been a huge deal for people. For those of you that have concerns about this, trust me, life will go on. :-)
So Igor, once again I ask that you reconsider. There are a lot of benefits to both 7-zip and NSIS installer users, and NSIS installer developers, as pointed out on their own forum, should really be using encryption or other more secure forms of protection for sensitive data anyway, rather than trying to rely on an open source installer. The purpose of an installer is to setup an application on a computer. The developer's job is to make this as easy as possible for the user, but ultimately it's the user himself who'll be using the application, and HOW he wants to use it is his prerogative.
Thanks for taking the time to read this reply.
