Hi,
The recent post from Uwe got me thinking about our cross platform
installers and our best options. It is easy enough to add the option to
add a desktop shortcut, but optionally adding file associations does not
seem to be possible with CPack and NSIS right now. This may be possible
and I just do not know NSIS well enough to see it… It is easy enough
to always associate with a file type, but I don’t think we want to force
that do we? The shortcuts in the start menu are simple to add with CPack.
CPack provides us with a staging area where it gathers all of the
Avogadro files. In build_CPack_Packages\win32\NSIS\Avogadro-0.9.1-win32
for the 0.9.1 release. Would it be feasible to use a hybrid approach for
now where we use the custom NSIS installer script coupled with the CPack
staging area?
I only just thought of this option and so would be interested in
people’s opinions. This would likely give us the best of both worlds for
now. We would have the possibility of pushing improvements into CPack to
enable optional file associations as the support is already getting
quite good.
http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake:Component_Install_With_CPack
I could not find anything about localization so far with CPack/NSIS. The
advantage of CPack is that many of its variables are actually common,
changes to one installer trickle to the others. Also, should Avogadro be
associated with more than just cml files? I think the experience gained
here should help adding a Mac package generator too. I don’t think Geoff
enjoys the time he spends staging the Mac releases either 
As always, opinions welcome. Especially from any of you Windows people
out there.
Thanks,
Marcus