Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:

> Good, then volunteer to do the work ;-)

"I KNEW he'd say that" :-). Hum, I'll see if I can find some time... Is the
current directory layout of an installed version a starting point to pull the
to-be-installed files from?

> What is the issue you are talking about and how did you determine that
> something is wrong?

Well, first I was disappointed by the fact that I was not allowed to choose the
target location of the install (I usually choose something different from
"C:\Program files"). I thought it'd go to somewhere below  %ProgramFiles% but
was even more bewildered to find the binaries below %APPDATA%, a user-specific
location. I've done a few setups myself and even though I haven't found the
ultimate "Installer Bible" yet, I found it reasonable to put the binaries to
%ProgramFiles%, which is write-protected from the ordinary user (even more under
Vista and later) but readable to all. If the application is smart enough to pull
some (installed) default data if it doesn't find user stuff there's an easy time
for all.

Just have a look at the way Firefox and Thunderbird handle this: all binaries
and the like are located below %ProgramFiles% and are shared among users but
read-only, and user-profile data is located below %APPDATA%.

Regards
Gerd

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