# Installer

The installer consists of two parts: `Setup.exe` (C++ bootstrapper) and `Update.exe` (C# Squirrel Client). There are several main design goals of the installer:

* Run as quickly as possible, with as little user interface interaction as possible. The faster we can get into the application, the better. An ideal install experience is that once `Setup.exe` gets clicked, within 3sec the application is running on the user's machine. Double-clicking `Setup.exe` should feel like clicking the app shortcut.

* `Setup.exe` should be written such that it does as little work as possible, because C++.

* Running an older `Setup.exe` should simply execute the current app.

* Support installation of non-C# applications

## Setup.exe

Setup.exe does the following operations:

1. Determines if the .NET Framework is installed
1. If not, relaunches itself with `/installfx45`, which opens a progress dialog which downloads the .NET Framework and silently invokes it.
1. Extract `Update.exe` and `AppName-full.nupkg` to `%LocalAppData%\Squirrel\Temp` which are embedded as resources.
1. Execute `Update.exe` with the `/install` switch, and apply any switches that were applied to Setup.exe
1. Nuke the extracted temporary files from step 3.

## Update.exe

Update.exe is a generic client for Squirrel which supports several operations:

* `--install [directory] [/silent]` - Install the NuPkg file given (or any NuPkg files in the same directory as itself), and launch their applications. If `/silent` is given, don't launch anything. Copy `Update.exe` to the application root directory. Install also writes an entry in Programs and Features which will invoke `/uninstall`.
* `--uninstall` - Completely uninstall the application associated with the directory in which `Update.exe` resides.
* `--download URL` - Check for updates from the given URL and write information about available versions to standard output in JSON format.
* `--update URL` - Updates the application to the latest version from the remote URL

## Sample JSON output

```
{
    currentVersion: "1.0.0.0",
    futureVersion: "1.0.0.1",
    releasesToApply: [
        {
            version: "1.0.0.1",
            releaseNotes: "This does a thing"
        }
    ]
}
```