User setup for Windows

Announced last release, the user setup package for Windows is now available on stable. Installing the user setup does not require Administrator privileges as the location will be under your user Local AppData (LOCALAPPDATA) folder. User setup also provides a smoother background update experience.

Download User Setup

If you are a current user of the system-wide Windows setup, you will be prompted to install user setup, which we recommend using from now on. Don't worry, all your settings and extensions will be kept during the transition. During installation, you will also be prompted to uninstall the system-wide setup.

Reference: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_26#_user-setup-for-windows

What you're really asking is:

How does an installer work?

A bit of background.

In the Before Times, man did not have such things as "installers." Software was run directly off of floppy disks (and none of that rigid 3.5" crap, I'm talking disks that flopped), like God intended.

Then came the first home computers with persistent hard drives. For the first time, it made sense to copy a program off a disk and have it stick around.

But programs still worked the way "portable" applications do today: you copied them as-is and ran them as-is.

Then operating systems began to get more complicated.

Windows introduced this notion of a registry: a central location where program and operating system configuration could be stored. Software authors began using this registry. Its arcane architecture and user-hostile editing utility (the infamous regedit.exe) made it the perfect place to store shareware information -- how many days you have left on your trial, for example.

This happened around the same time that programs began to be too large to fit -- uncompressed -- on a single floppy disk. A way was needed to split a program onto multiple disks. Since it wasn't very user-friendly to require the user to have e.g. a ZIP extractor installed (remember, this was before ubiquitous Internet), Windows programs began to be shipped with installers. You can think of these as basically portable versions of WinZIP whose sole purpose was to reassemble and extract a compressed file.

These days, installers serve a number of other purposes:

• providing a convenient user interface
• prompting the user to accept a click-through end-user license agreement (EULA)
• prompting the user for CD keys (though this is being phased out for many systems in favor of digital distribution)
• asking the user to register their software

and so on. They may also serve as DRM vehicles, validating CDs and decrypting data to prevent villainous individuals (yarr) from brrreakin' ye olde DMCA.

At their heart, they aren't any more complex than in the Windows 95 days -- a glorified unzip program.

Sidenote: Where does the installer get 5GB of data from 200MB of archives if not the Internet?

That's high, though there are plenty of ways you could get that compression ratio. Imagine a complex game whose world is defined in verbose XML -- that's readily compressible. You could even get that back in the old WinZIP days.

If you have the choice of both; the installer typically just means that you get a nicer UI to choose the setup directory and some installation options, rather than having to use a seperate unzip utility and selectively remove the parts you don't want/need. Also, in the case of Windows programs an installer may also add entries to the registry (user selected options, key validation, other random stuff) which you won't get with a zip.

As Journeyman Greek said in his post, zip package is better for standalone 'installs' where you want portability and don't want to be tied down to a particular machine. This is because .zip naturally won't make any changes to registry, so unless they give you a .reg file to click on (very unlikely) it means that the entire directory is self-contained including any local .ini files.

Personally I prefer downloading the installer in general; because I get any customization options and it will setup any registry entries automatically as well.

I would assume the user setup will install for the local user only, without the need for administrator privileges, whereas the none user setup will install for all users on the system, however it will require administrator privileges.

The .msi uses the Microsoft Windows Installer format which is included with Windows itself, you can install VSCodium as a local user or for all users, the latter of which requires administrator privileges. The Microsoft Windows Installer format theoretically is better for compatibility with past and future versions of Windows however it can limit what the developer can do during the installation process. For VSCodium it won't make a difference which installer you choose to use because as far as I'm aware the installation of VSCodium doesn't require anything terribly unique.

For simplicities sake, you can think of .msi files as installation files that provide Windows the information to install and manage a piece of software, whereas executables can be just that, executable files that could do anything, they're not limited to software installation however some do provide a delivery of self managed software installation.

Basically a user install doesn't require admin rights. This means if you want to use VSCode on your work computer you don't need to get IT to install it.

It should still show up in the start menu. Assuming you selected the option in the installer it should have a shortcut somewhere in

%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs`

Finally Microsoft does provide a system install version that sounds like what you are looking for. It's located on the download page: https://code.visualstudio.com/Download

The installer is typically there to make things easier for the end user. It does some combination of the following:

• Unzipping
• Creation of directories
• Installation of required runtimes (redistributable like: .Net, Visual C++, Direct x)
• Registration with the OS (for later clean uninstall)
• Display beautiful, beautiful screenshots to prepare the player for your game while it works.
• Offering the user the chance to register their game
• Downloading updates for the assets or patches for the game
• Add icons to the start menu or the desktop
• Set correct permissions for various game directories (temp folder, save directory, etc.)
• Just install it already, allow the user to mindlessly click next and get to playing the game!

It very much depends on your target audience, and what your installer needs to accomplish.

If your audience is technically savvy, and the installer just has to extract some files, and create shortcuts, I probably wouldn't bother.

If you need to modify system variables, register services, etc, definitely create an installer to make life easier for your users - regardless of how technically savvy they are.

You can always offer the option of installer / no installer, and let your users decide what they want. The number of downloads and resulting support requests will tell you whether you should utilize one or not.

just a different way to install, if you happen to prefer extracting everything yourself. the only difference is that the installer will automatically add shortcuts to your start menu/desktop.

don't download both, you only need one, they both contain the same files.

What you're really asking is:

How does an installer work?

A bit of background.

In the Before Times, man did not have such things as "installers." Software was run directly off of floppy disks (and none of that rigid 3.5" crap, I'm talking disks that flopped), like God intended.

Then came the first home computers with persistent hard drives. For the first time, it made sense to copy a program off a disk and have it stick around.

But programs still worked the way "portable" applications do today: you copied them as-is and ran them as-is.

Then operating systems began to get more complicated.

Windows introduced this notion of a registry: a central location where program and operating system configuration could be stored. Software authors began using this registry. Its arcane architecture and user-hostile editing utility (the infamous regedit.exe) made it the perfect place to store shareware information -- how many days you have left on your trial, for example.

This happened around the same time that programs began to be too large to fit -- uncompressed -- on a single floppy disk. A way was needed to split a program onto multiple disks. Since it wasn't very user-friendly to require the user to have e.g. a ZIP extractor installed (remember, this was before ubiquitous Internet), Windows programs began to be shipped with installers. You can think of these as basically portable versions of WinZIP whose sole purpose was to reassemble and extract a compressed file.

These days, installers serve a number of other purposes:

• providing a convenient user interface
• prompting the user to accept a click-through end-user license agreement (EULA)
• prompting the user for CD keys (though this is being phased out for many systems in favor of digital distribution)
• asking the user to register their software

and so on. They may also serve as DRM vehicles, validating CDs and decrypting data to prevent villainous individuals (yarr) from brrreakin' ye olde DMCA.

At their heart, they aren't any more complex than in the Windows 95 days -- a glorified unzip program.

Sidenote: Where does the installer get 5GB of data from 200MB of archives if not the Internet?

That's high, though there are plenty of ways you could get that compression ratio. Imagine a complex game whose world is defined in verbose XML -- that's readily compressible. You could even get that back in the old WinZIP days.