Deployment strategy

[TSchmiedlechner]

User story

As a user of the Middleware Launcher, I want to be able to deploy it as simply as possible, so that I don't waste time installing dependencies.

Context

Version 1 of the Launcher only allows "manual" deployment by extracting a zip-file that can be downloaded from the Portal. While this is a very easy installation approach, it also has some disadvantages (e.g. the classic .NET framework needs to be installed on the host).

With .NET 6 and modern deployment methods, we have several alternatives to this, e.g.:

• Single file deployments: Instead of downloading a .zip file with 100 included files that has a dependency to the correct version of the .NET framework, we could generate a single .exe file that already contains the relevant bits of the framework and has no external dependencies at all. A potential disadvantage of this approach is that this .exe would be platform-specific.

• Package manager deployments: We could also make use of standard package managers that come with most modern OSs now, including Windows. Examples to consider:

  • Winget
  • Chocolatey
  • APT
  • Snap
  • Homebrew

  The obvious disadvantage of this approach is that there are many different package managers that we'd need to automate. Automatic updates could be a big advantage.

[volllly]

maybe also consider scoop 🤷‍♀️

[forsthug]

some nodes

Name	OS	pricing	owner	package server	pros cons
Winget	windows	free	windows	repository	for win >= 10
Chocolatey	windows	kostenlosen („Open Source“) und zwei kostenpflichtigen („Pro“ und „Business“)	https://chocolatey.org/	Community Package Repository	Voraussetzung wird weiterhin eine Installation der PowerShell und des .NET-Framework, Version 4.[6]
APT	linux	free	debian	/etc/apt/sources.list	widly used
Snap	linux	gpl	Canonical	Snap Store	Configurable sandbox, not having a mechanism for using third party servers,
Homebrew	linux/macOS	gpl	opensource	homebrew-core Homebrew Formulae
scoop	Windows			non-Admin by default, installs in user directory	Scoop is designed for developers who have an affinity for Unix

[forsthug]

formatieren geht anscheinend nicht :)

[volllly]

We have apt get and portal download as installation methods right now. #73

Do we also want to add a windows/macos package manager?

[TSchmiedlechner]

I just thought of the possibility to use Flatpack to distribute the Launcher on Linux - might be a nice way to also reach less popular distributions without additional effort :)

https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/submission/

[volllly]

I think we might run into some problems 🥲 We'll need to do some experimentation I guess