Publish releases in the microsoft store

[Trolldemorted]

Have you thought about releasing nemp as an app in the microsoft store? "Download this zip file, extract it to $location" does not work with the digitally illiterate, and even I as a developer would appreciate if my operating system updates nemp automagically.

[DanielGausi]

I haven't thought about the MS store yet (I never used it, and honestly I'm not planning to do so), but I do think about some "installer", which should make it easier for non-developers as well.
But I'm gonna go check how the MS store works. Maybe I will add this in a future release, or at least some other in-app update mechanism.

[Trolldemorted]

I have never used it, but with the desktop bridge you should™ be able to package win32 apps "easily". I think you will have to declare it a FullTrustApplication so it won't run inside a sandbox like UWP apps do, but at least you get signed and automated updates for free.

Writing an in-app update mechanism that copes with everything is tough, had to do it once, will hopefully never have to do it again - there is a lot what can go wrong, and you will have to take care of encryption and signature validation yourself.

By the way, you might want to add TLS encryption to gausi.de, right now everyone en-route has remote code execution on your users' machines.

[dertuxmalwieder]

even I as a developer would appreciate if my operating system updates nemp automagically.

Sounds like a job for Chocolatey! (It's what I use.) Writing a script that downloads, checksums and unpacks a ZIP archive is one of the easiest tasks to solve with it.

[Trolldemorted]

Sounds like a job for an appstore. You don't want all your users to manually write obscure scripts that download, verify, unpack and replace multiple binaries and resources while guaranteeing that

• the nemp directory is consistent (i.e. contains files of only one version) at any time. The system might lose power while the upgrade is happening, so you must atomically "replace" all files at once).
• a running nemp process is not impaired. If it lazy-loads stuff from nemp's directory, no matter if shared libraries or resources like skins, the script has to ensure all running nemp instances of all currently logged in users see the directory of the version they are. Nemp might use memory-mapped files, who knows what caveats they imply.
• you don't fuck up security.

Implementing that would essentially mean reinventing the wheel and creating your own appstore backend. Would definitely not recommend, been there done that. Not to mention the majority of the users will not be able to use a package manager correctly.

With all due respect, I am certain we won't manage to build a better solution than the appstore anytime soon. Why would you even want to do that?

[dertuxmalwieder]

Chocolatey has been a well-established package manager since long before the Microsoft Store was a relevant source for software. I agree that it is a bit harder to use than the Microsoft Store. It was nothing more than a suggestion from my side. :-)

Adding software to said Store sounds like hard work to me.

[DanielGausi]

No fighting, please. ;-)

Chocolatey looks interesting, I'll have a look an that. The MS app store looks also interesting, but there is a (small) fee for me, and it seems to have some limitiations (e.g. I found an inofficial modified version of notepad++ there, as the original version is not compatible to the stores policy - for whatever reasons). Don't know whether Nemp fits in there.

I can't promise anything for the near future. The most probable option for now is to provide an installer package (exe, msi?) as an alternative download to the zip file. Next thing could be Chocolatey as another option for those who use it. The MS App store has the lowest priority for me atm. In general, I just don't like the concept of these centralized stores from Google/Apple/MS/whatever. ;-)

[Trolldemorted]

Microsoft is creating its own package manager and repository now:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-package-manager-preview/
https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs

It might be worth looking at!

[dertuxmalwieder]

And they even work together with Chocolatey! ;-)

[DanielGausi]

I'll have a look on it, but with a low priority for now.

This week I'm planning to release a new version with improved portability, quick-access to some "favorite playlists" and better quality for covers in the coverflow.

After that, I'll probably have to take a little break in the development Nemp - but hopefully not too long.