Consideration for Winget

[MorosophDude]

Hi there,

Are you considering "Compiling and Uploading to WinGet". Firstly, I actually don't know anything about this process(I am a total noob when it comes to creating/deploying package), I am here because of leoafarias/fvm#458.

I understand why chocolatey was used for windows(and I don't want that to change) but I was just wondering if winget was being considered since it comes by default in all new windows installations and I(any maybe others like me) don't want to install one more stuff if possible.

[nex3]

I'm open to this in theory, but there are some serious logistical difficulties. It looks like the Dart SDK ran into some trouble trying to provide a package that just adds a directory to the PATH (dart-lang/sdk#43977). We could theoretically provide an MSI, but actually creating an MSI requires access to the Windows Installer SDK which would pose some serious complications from this package (although may be doable from FFI if you're willing to require the package to be built on Windows). The rest of the submission process seems reasonably straightforward. It requires a PR, but we could open that with the standard GitHub credentials we require elsewhere.

All that said, it's not tremendously likely our team will have time to add this very soon.

[loic-peron-inetum-public]

Adding to winget is not per-se a problem anymore, at winget can now deploy standalone exe files or zipped exe files downloaded from github (see microsoft/winget-pkgs#272766 for my attempt for FVM).

The missing part is a standalone exe uploaded to github (leoafarias/fvm#891, #67).

I would like some guidance to implement this feature.

[nex3]

Although Dart can compile to a standalone EXE, there's a major barrier to making this usable: those EXEs must be code-signed in order to run without a warning, and setting up a code-signing pipeline is substantially more difficult than just uploading to a package repository. We ship a multi-file bundle because the Dart EXE is already code-signed and so can run without any issue.

[loic-peron-inetum-public]

I follow-up on #67 as the standalone executable feature for Windows is tracked in this other ticket.