Integration of Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher (Windows Version) to the Chocolatey package manager

[mbieh]

Hi,

The title says it all. Please add your installation files to the Chocolatey package manager for Windows .


 

So that I can further optimize and automate my software update processes. Affinity Photo and Designer are one of the last tools on my computer that need to be updated manually.

Best regards

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Affinity forums, @mbieh.

Are there other commercial packages (ones you have to pay for, and get a license for) on Chocolatey? 

I have a hard time envisioning how paying and license management would work in that environment.

[mbieh]

For example https://chocolatey.org/packages/winrar.

It simply installs the trial version of WinRAR, into which you can then insert your serial number or file. From then on it uses the update mechanism to always write over the existing installation. But your license is still there. Just as if you were downloading the installer from the website and running it.

I think if Affinty's update behavior is the same, it could just as easily work. Someone has to maintain the packages.

[walt.farrell]

Thanks. Unfortunately, the Affinity trial version does not (I think) work quite the same way. You do not upgrade from the Trial version to the purchased version by inserting your license number. You uninstall the Trial, and install the purchased version.

Assuming Serif were willing to package for Chocolatey, they would have to package the purchased version, which would when opened ask for the license number. But the user would have no way to get the Trial version except by downloading it from the separate Affinity store.

[u54u654]

This would be a great addition. Manually updating things is a bore and a needless waste of time. Using choco-upgrade-all-at these updates can just install automatically with zero user input.

On 1/11/2019 at 11:23 AM, walt.farrell said:

Thanks. Unfortunately, the Affinity trial version does not (I think) work quite the same way. You do not upgrade from the Trial version to the purchased version by inserting your license number. You uninstall the Trial, and install the purchased version.

Assuming Serif were willing to package for Chocolatey, they would have to package the purchased version, which would when opened ask for the license number. But the user would have no way to get the Trial version except by downloading it from the separate Affinity store.

The simple workaround is to add two packages, one named AffinityPhoto-Trial and another AffinityPhoto-Pro.

There's already a precedent set with packages such as:

• avast-pro-trial
• revouninstallerpro
• glaryutilities-pro
• glaryutilities-free

[walt.farrell]

28 minutes ago, u54u654 said:

This would be a great addition. Manually updating things is a bore and a needless waste of time. Using choco-upgrade-all-at these updates can just install automatically with zero user input.

The simple workaround is to add two packages, one named AffinityPhoto-Trial and another AffinityPhoto-Pro.

There's already a precedent set with packages such as:

• avast-pro-trial
• revouninstallerpro
• glaryutilities-pro
• glaryutilities-free

That was an old post, and I believe the trial works differently now.

In any case, at this time Serif is not interested in supporting Linux.

[u54u654]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That was an old post, and I believe the trial works differently now.

In any case, at this time Serif is not interested in supporting Linux.

Regardless, it would be great to see this application added to the Chocolatey Windows package manager (not linux).

Edited April 3, 2020 by u54u654

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, u54u654 said:

Regardless, it would be great to see this application added to the Chocolatey Windows package manager (not linux).

Sorry; lost track that the discussion was for Windows.

Yes, it's probably technically feasible to integrate it now. However, I have no idea if Serif would be interested in that, given that they are a small staff and already needing to produce 3 or 4 installer versions of each of their applications. It's extra work doing the packaging of the installer, and the testing of the installer, and supporting it when something doesn't work right.

[Psychotic Reactions]

I think it would be reasonable to a have a community contributed Chocolatey package using the MSI installer. However, the technical hurdle is, in order to generate an MSI, you need to supply a serial and email address to the exe installer.  Chocolatey aside, there is a use case for an MSI installer that can accept flags for serial and email address. This would help enterprise admins distribute Affinity products using whatever package manager they choose.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Psychotic Reactions
grammar

[Renzatic]

You may be able to do something similar to this with Winget, MS' home grown package manager. There's an experimental feature that allows you to install Store apps from the command line using it.

https://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2021/01/install-apps-from-the-microsoft-store-using-winget/

[walt.farrell]

On 9/16/2021 at 12:12 PM, Psychotic Reactions said:

Chocolatey aside, there is a use case for an MSI installer that can accept flags for serial and email address. This would help enterprise admins distribute Affinity products using whatever package manager they choose.

I don't know the details of the resources enterprise admins have, but they already have access to more information and management resources than we individual customers have  from hints I've seen here.