Elmer Installers: cmake/cpack/nsis wizards wanted

Discussion about building and installing Elmer
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raback
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Elmer Installers: cmake/cpack/nsis wizards wanted

Post by raback »

Hi Elmer Users,

As you've perhaps seen the Windows installer at sf.net hasn't been lately updated. I'm talking about the .exe that most beginners prefer (the .gz packages can still be updated). Now the reason for this is that our old faithful machine that was doing this broke down. We might have a back-up version but the system was using many outdated libraries any way so it is perhaps better to update this thoroughly now.

Now I see this as a great motivation to continue the cmake efforts that was already nicely started by Sami and Phil as this will provide better cross compilation capabilities. cmake and cpack (and nsis for Windows) should be able to provide installers for many different platforms. At the same time we plan to make some small code changes to improve the portability of the code. Probably also Paraview will be made the default visualization software.

Now we in core Elmer team don't unfortunately have much experience in Windows installers. This is downloaded about 20,000 times a year so it is rather important. Still it is easily neglected as we are quite occupied with various development projects and hardly use Windows at all ourselves. The same is more or less true for Macs.

There are probably some cmake/cpack/nsis gurus among Elmer users. If you also happen to be interested in contributing please send me a personal message explaining how you would like to help. The schedule is not yet fixed but it would be nice to have the installer up and running within a few months. Also all technical or non-technical ideas how to make the installers or distribution packages are most welcome.

best regards,
Peter
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