ci: Add otp_win.zip to releases

[wojtekmach]

I'd like to propose including Windows .zip release besides the .exe installer in GitHub releases.

I'm building a CLI tool that allows easily installing multiple OTP versions. I'd prefer not to use the installers for the following reasons:

• They write to Windows registry. While most registry entries are nicely namespaced so there would not be any conflicts, I'd prefer not to leave things behind. Worth mentioning there are global entries for windows features like the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Erlang OTP and HKCR ".erl".
• At the moment, installers require admin permissions (Windows installer without admin privileges #8531)

After downloading the .zip, users can manually run the included Install.exe.

Btw, the release requires vc_redist.x64.exe (also mentioned in #8531) so if this proposal is accepted, the question is whether it should be included in the .zip.

FWIW, in my tool I'm downloading and running it myself:

ensure_vcredist() {
  if [ -f /c/windows/system32/vcruntime140.dll ]; then
    return
  fi

  url="https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x64.exe"
  file="vc_redist.x64.exe"

  echo "downloading VC++ Redistributable $url..."
  curl --retry 3 --fail -L -o "$file" "$url"
  echo "installing VC++ Redistributable $url..."
  ./"$file" /quiet /norestart
}

Another idea for not writing to windows registry would be to add a flag to generated installer, we can allegedly read it with ${GetParameters} $R0, something it would perhaps be something like otp_win64_27.1.exe /NOWINREG.

cc @tsloughter

[github-actions]

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// Erlang/OTP Github Action Bot

[wojtekmach]

at the moment the .zip is not yet included in the release, I'm not sure how .exe ends up here. I assume it's via some actions/download-artifact but I couldn't figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.

[garazdawi]

The windows .exe and .dll files attached to each release are not created by GitHub actions, but our internal scripts. This because they need to be signed with our certificate and we cannot do that using GitHub actions. So if we want to have .zip for windows we either need to re-package the installer added by the sync releases GitHub action, or add the appropriate scripts to our internal ci that uploads it to erlang.org/downloads.

I’ll try to get back to you next week to see if/how we can solve this.

[tsloughter]

Yea, I have the same use case as @wojtekmach. I plan to support Windows in https://github.com/tsloughter/beamup/ and use the binary releases and being able to just unzip the release would be nice.

[garazdawi]

We don't mind having this functionality so would welcome a PR that adds it.

I suggest that it is done by creating a new github workflow that triggers on release creation+edit that downloads the windows installers (32 and 64-bit), installs them and then creates .zip files from what is installed.

The same workflow could also be triggered on dispatch to create .zip files for any release that has already been released.

[wojtekmach]

@garazdawi my understanding is UNIX installations are relocatable since a few releases but windows aren't. In my testing, after I moved the installation directory, I couldn't run bin/erl anymore, it complained it couldn't find erlexec.dll anymore, it was looking at prior path.

Perhaps making it relocatable is a first step towards this?

[garazdawi]

There is a file called erl.ini located in %ERL_INSTALL_PATH%\bin that messes with the start of Erlang. If you remove it then Erlang should be relocatable.

We will create a PR that removes this file from the installer. From what we can tell it is no longer needed and just causes problems.

[wojtekmach]

@garazdawi oh, perfect, I just removed erl.ini and it fixed the issue. Thanks!

I'll open up a new PR per your instructions.

[wojtekmach]

I created a follow-up PR: #8787