Why is there no google-chrome?

[scoopinstaller]

Why is there no google-chrome?

[lukesampson]

I'm not sure if users would appreciate that PortableApps behavior—seems like unnecessary interference to me. I tend to agree it's not worth it.

[Ash258]

But chocolatey does not care, where you install application. Since chrome installer cannot be forced to change destination (for my tests few months ago, TARGETDIR, other generic variables are not working), it's not suitable to scoop behaviour. Also not everyone want to install using enterprise level installers with some default configs.

Alternatively you can use untrusted chrome offline installer made by users (like I do https://github.com/Ash258/scoop-Ash258/blob/master/bucket/Chrome.json), but it's not recommended for most of users.

[lukesampson]

Answer: because no one has submitted a manifest yet! Would appreciate your pull request if you have time.

[TangentFoxy]

Going with the philosophy of scoop. it seems the version of Google Chrome packaged with the PortableApps.com platform should be used, but I would argue such a manifest should just install Chrome the regular way. Thoughts?

[lukesampson]

It looks like the PortableApps.com download is just a stub that downloads the program files. So, besides versioning info, I'm not sure what benefit that provides over downloading ChromeSetup.exe direct from Google.

The "standalone" version from Google doesn't appear to be easily extractable (e.g. https://dl.google.com/tag/s/appguid%3D%7B8A69D345-D564-463C-AFF1-A69D9E530F96%7D%26iid%3D%7B8F53A4DD-FDE7-E6D6-C2D4-C2E1E9735C56%7D%26lang%3Den%26browser%3D4%26usagestats%3D0%26appname%3DGoogle%2520Chrome%26needsadmin%3Dprefers%26ap%3Dx64-stable/update2/installers/ChromeStandaloneSetup64.exe)

Reading here it sounds like Google have put measures in place to prevent the kind of minimalist install that Scoop is good at (download, extract, link).

This may be why no one has submitted Chrome to Scoop so far. Google seems intent on controlling the install and doing their own updates, and it looks difficult to circumvent and simplify this. A Scoop install that could overcome these difficulties wouldn't seem to provide users much benefit over the official installer.

If it even works, there might be issues with updates. Scoop would think the original version was installed while it has been updated in place by Google Update.

TLDR; abandon all hope. It'll be hard to get a working Scoop install, hard to maintain, and likely provide users a sub-par update experience. Would still accept a PR if you do want to proceed.

[robinloeffel]

Awh, bummer!

But then, in regards to Opera: It's a self-updating browser too, right? So if I initially install it via Scoop, but it then updates itself, how will Scoop handle that? Same thing for Firefox.

[lukesampson]

Scoop doesn't handle self-updating programs—they will be reported as out of date if they've been self-updated. It is a minus. But the difficult install with possible admin permissions, GUI install, and unknown side effects are the deal breaker.

[TangentFoxy]

@lukesampson The PortableApps packaging keeps everything self-contained by keeping track of and undoing changes to the host operating system between launches. It seems like it would be the only way to get things to work given the issue with Google explicitly preventing doing what scoop is trying to do.

I don't know if it's worth doing though.

[robinloeffel]

In that case I think not adding google-chrome sounds reasonable.

[janpio]

Is still situation still unchanged today?

Chocolatey seems to have found a way to install Chrome, https://chocolatey.org/packages/GoogleChrome (check the scripts), is this because it only runs with admin rights?

#400 (comment) the current behavior is kind of like that.

changes are not persisted between upgrades. if you have old browser version installed and do scoop update, both for chrome and firefox. and the browsers don't allow importing from their previous versions, even though previous versions provide password exports. similarly for browser history and bookmarks.

and there are other issues like wasted folders in C:\Users\asd-collab\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\. so most users should avoid using scoop to install browsers.

also this for all apps->

> scoop info youtube-dl                                                                               Name: youtube-dl
Description: Download videos from YouTube.com (and a few more sites) using command line.
Version: 2019.11.05
Website: https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/
License: Unlicense (https://spdx.org/licenses/Unlicense.html)
Manifest:
  D:\scoop\buckets\main\bucket\youtube-dl.json
Installed:
  D:\scoop\apps\youtube-dl\2019.09.28
  D:\scoop\apps\youtube-dl\2019.10.16
  D:\scoop\apps\youtube-dl\2019.10.22
  D:\scoop\apps\youtube-dl\2019.10.29
  D:\scoop\apps\youtube-dl\2019.11.05
Binaries:
  youtube-dl.exe

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asd-collab