Updating through winget is not smooth

[stevenlele]

notepad4/doc/release.md

Lines 22 to 23 in 77c708f

	| i18n | all above languages | winget | `winget install -e "Notepad4"` |
	| 한국어 | https://teus.me/Notepad4 | winget | `winget install zufuliu.notepad4` |

• winget support? #574

When updating through winget, it will check if the SHA256 of all files match the installation. Typically, the INI file is modified, so it will stop updating. Adding --force will let winget remove the configuration file and update. So basically the user need to copy the INI files out of the installation folder, force update, then copy the INI files back. The same thing happens upon uninstallation.

To make the update smooth, you need to move the default configuration directory to %APPDATA%/AppName. This might be a breaking change, but you could, for example, automatically move existing old configuration files to that folder upon opening Notepad4 (if detected). It will also mean that you need to hardcode the default INI files into an executable and extract them if they are absent.

You can close this issue if you don't bother implementing it.

[zufuliu]

cc winget package maintainer @MerrickZ.

[MerrickZ]

I am worried that currently, when notepad4 is presented as a zip archive, winget does not support this operation.

Potential solutions might include:

1. Provide an installer (msi / msix / nullsoft / Inno / wix , etc.).
2. Move the INI file to %userProfile% directory, as previously mentioned. by @stevenlele
3. Use registry as default and provide export/import INI as an option.
4. maybe some unknown winget configurations..?

I'll investigate what I can do this weekend.

[stevenlele]

Might as well use scoop:

• notepad2-zufuliu: Rename to notepad4 and update to version 24.09r5472 ScoopInstaller/Extras#13920

[zufuliu]

Is this fixed? @stevenlele what's command to install Notepad4 using Scoop, scoop install notepad4?

[stevenlele]

Is this fixed?

No, I don't think this will ever be fixed from either side. Nobody here seems interested in working on changing the config directory, while pushing WinGet to support such a "complicated" feature is nearly impossible. Therefore I closed this issue as "not planned".

what's command to install Notepad4 using Scoop, scoop install notepad4?

No. The package is still named notepad2-zufuliu at version 4.24.05r5242. To install it, user need to manually install Scoop, run scoop bucket add extras, then install the package.

As you can see in ScoopInstaller/Extras#13920, the only active maintainer reviewer of the official Scoop extras bucket, @aliesbelik, currently silently refuses to review or merge any PRs they are not interested in, so you can say the repo is not actually under good maintenance.

Of course, you can maintain your own bucket with https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/BucketTemplate.

Since the package is outdated and the installation steps are complicated, I don't recommend putting it in the instructions.

[Luckz]

Each update, I have to:

• winget update --force --name "Notepad4 (AVX2)" (--id selection fails like 99% of the time)
• uncomment the local app data ini path in the presupplied ini file

It's not quite smooth but it could be worse.

[brkerez]

Every time I see Notepad4 has new version via winget upgrade I feel pain and say to myself let's do it when I have time. Which is never 🙂

Today I refused to suffer any more, I created Notepad4 upgrade powershell script so I'm sharing if anyone finds it useful.

https://gist.github.com/brkerez/4e9f5d6bc325058233d369587ca31e78

It does few things:

• backups current configuration before upgrade to temporary dir
  • dir is configurable through -BackupDirectory option
  • it creates new dir for every backup, each stamped by timestamp (overkill yes)
  • the list of files to backup is configurable through -ConfigFiles option, default is all *.ini files
• launches winget install --silent -e --id zufuliu.notepad4.AVX2 --force
  • the exact package id for --id option name is configurable through -Package script option
• it restores the cfg files from the backup
• if -Merge option is provided, it tries to sniffs sniff out some merging tool in your system (WinMerge/Meld/Beyond Compare) and launches the merge window for every incoming file to allow for upstream changes merge with your backups
  • I tested it only with WinMerge

[zufuliu]

INI problem should be addressed by PR #1069: use %LOCALAPPDATA%\Notepad4 to store INI files and copy bunded INI to the folder on first run.