Control Panel --> uninstall apps
The issue is with how windows setup exes are designed. Most allow you to uninstall after running the exe again...others do not and leave traces of themselves everywhere.
This is a great first step and leads to some automation possibilities when setting up new installs.
Then when the MSIs aren't built correctly, they will leave you with a detection method that gets hosed when the software auto-updates. So you run your package manager, and it'll detect that your software is no longer installed, because the MSI product code changed for the newer version.
I mean we have so many ways to do software on Windows. Let's count them:
* MSI * EXE * MSU * AppX * Windows Features * dism * Windows Update * SCCM Deployments
Even just open up the "Uninstall Apps" control panel, or the old "Add / Remove Programs" and look how long it takes to load the list. It's pulling from like 20 different places in the registry and various places in the WMI database just to build that list. So when you want to use that as a detection method, good luck...
It's horrible. MSI is so complex, and there are constraints, limitations and oddities at every twist and turn.
I love Windows for desktops, but my all time favourite item on my wishlist is for Microsoft to completely revamp how software is installed, from scratch, to improve things. I really mean from scratch - I know Microsoft like every new thing they do to be compatible all the way back to Windows 3.1, but no, really, from scratch!
But agree, there should be no need to things like docker if apps were sufficiently compartimented and explicit about their requirements.
It’s all done via declarative XML and made my life much easier.
The last MSI installer I wrote had to install 2 Windows services, write to the registry, grant file system access rights, and install a minifilter driver. There was a lot of swearing, and I was really close to launching my laptop out of a Window several times. It was a very unhappy period of my life, and if I never have to write another MSI installer, it will be too soon.
They did, it's called MSIX and there are apparently few HN commenters aware of it, especially among those that complain about installing things on Windows. I'm not referring to the comment I replied to.
* MSI * EXE * MSU * AppX * Windows Features * dism * Windows Update * SCCM Deployments * MSIX.
So now everyone uses MSIX? Or are there still a combination of all of the above being used today?
Creating a new standard is one thing, enforcing it is another. It's like XKCD 927, just yet another option to add to the list.
Why are multiple options a bad thing? Seriously.
We need a trust / verification system that's built for more than grabbing money out of the pockets of developers.
You could tell they were screwed when even Microsoft didn't use MSI after they invented it.