Installers:
So when you run the updates of the paf apps, the progress bar has a strange never seen before anywhere else.
lets say you update only 1 app, so the progress bar jumps twice, once for when app was downloaded and once when installed.
its kind of a useless very strange looking bar, and the strange thing is that in the download stage you show how much downloaded from total and at what speed so you can make that bar smarter, and in the installation stage, it is nsis which already has a built in progress so if you could use that (and at same time also show the details of what files are extracted and so on just like any other nsis installer) it would be much more clear and the progressbar would actually make sense and help users see how much progress really passes and how much left.
installer creator:
I always choose the interactive mode, but its also pretty useless. it shows total of 3 lines and not really the actual progress or what it is doing unlike nsis installer creator which shows the details of what it is doing.
So you wait and wait but it could really help to just see what it is doing to feel you are getting somewhere.
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I don't often use the PA.c installer generator in interactive mode, so I'll have to look into that to see what you mean there.
Seeing "say you update only 1 app", I think you mean the PA.c Updater, not the PA.c Installer, in which case I have noticed the same thing, and had similar thoughts:
Basically I guess this post comes down to "these things are on my personal todo list, but they're not yet at the top of it" and "I'll take a closer look at that".
~3D1T0R
thanks a lot. by the way, the first part talks about the installers themselves, not the creator like you said.
I talked about things in a different order than you, but I think my comments are about all of the things you're referring to. In particular, the first paragraph of my comment is a response to the last paragraph of your opening post. Hopefully that clears things up a bit.
If you are in fact referring to something in your OP that I have not addressed, please quote it and state what exactly you mean, as I think I covered everything you mentioned.
~3D1T0R
Interactive mode in the installer creator is used to prompt the user for missing bits when compiling an installer (like if they're missing DisplayVersion, for instance). Without this set, it would fail with an error instead. It has nothing to do with the progress meter which is just set to move forward slowly at a fixed pace. There is no way to pull data from the NSIS compiler to show percentage.
As for the updater, as the other post mentions, we don't have a way to pull progress from the underlying installers right now. So, it's just showing the overall progress of downloads for the first 50% and the overall progress for installs for the second 50% in the overall progress meter. If you're only installing a single app, it works as you mentioned above.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Yes, I understood that, but I open this topic hoping for this to improve somehow.
For the installer creator, NSIS doesn't show it's compilation progress even internally let alone expose it externally, so there is nothing that can be improved upon from our end. As a general rule, compilers don't show progress nor do installer packagers.
As for the updater, we'd need to somehow expose the installer progress externally as I don't think NSIS makes this available by default. As a cheat, we could allow an option to show the installer itself. Generally, this shouldn't be much of an issue as most apps install quickly. The exception would be the office suites. Or if a user is using a low end USB 2.0 drive still. Or I could create fake slow progress as you see with the installer creator. This would really only be useful if the user is installing/updating 3 or fewer apps at a time.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!