Windows ARM64 installer.exe only installs Swift under AppData for the current user

[egorzhdan]

Windows ARM64 installer.exe only installs Swift under AppData for the current user

[egorzhdan]

cc @compnerd @shahmishal

[compnerd]

This is intentional. If we are installing to %ProgramFiles%, it would require elevated privileges. Doing a dual install setup is far more complicated (where you can select between the two). Most software these days is distributed as a user-centric installer (e.g. VSCode has a user installer and a system installer).

[egorzhdan]

That makes sense! Do you think it would be reasonable to provide a checkbox like "install system-wide" if the installer was invoked with admin privileges, or is that not something that Windows installers do conventionally?

[compnerd]

That is possible to do but requires a fair amount of tweaking is my understanding. Patches to enable that are welcome though :)

[tristanlabelle]

@egorzhdan , is there a scenario that installing machine-wide enables? We worked with the creators of the WiX installer technologies and they told us that supporting both was complex, so we chose per-user as it requires fewer privileges.

This issue would also be best for apple/swift-installer-scripts

[lxbndr]

A separate system-wide installer would be nice. I was going to set up a PC for my team to play with Swift on Windows - one installation, multiple users.