Windows Installer : add option to install MuseScore for all users/single user

I tried to edit build/packaging/WIX.template.in and it "sort of" works, but I still see some problems.
I changed WixUI_InstallDir to WixUI_Advanced, I removed the WIXUI_INSTALLDIR property and set:
APPLICATIONFOLDER as INSTALL_ROOT
ApplicationFolderName as "$(var.CPACK_PACKAGE_NAME) $(var.CPACK_PACKAGE_VERSION)"
WixAppFolder as WixPerMachineFolder

(I tried this change in master branch)
The installer is created, but:
- it skips the welcome dialog;
- it installs when clicking "Install", requiring administration privileges, but it uninstalls MuseScore 2 and installs MuseScore in %PROGRAM FILES (x86)%/MuseScore 3 (3.0.0 unstable)
- when going to "Advance" and selecting "all users", the prompted folder is called Musescore-3.0.0; when keeping such folder and clicking next, I get msi error 2727
- when going to "Advance" and selecting "just for you", it behaves like the "Install" case

maybe we could add an InstallScopeDlg by inserting it in the InstallDIr UI as described here (section "Inserting a custom dialog into a built-in dialog set"):
http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/wixui/wixui_customization…

I managed to insert an InstallScopeDlg inside the installation executable.
It seems to work by setting ALLUSERS variable, but I don't know how to test if it really works in my machine. I noticed that I have to use elevated privileges also in the "per user" installation (contrary to what the default button dialogue of InstallScopeDlg says, since I introduced only the change of the ALLUSERS variable and not the change of installation directory).
Attached a diff of what I modified.
If changing only the ALLUSERS variable is enough, we could insert a customized version of this dialogue tab (basically cloning InstallScopeDlg source wxs code), but that would require translations into the different languages.

After reading about per-user and per-machine installations (and getting more and more confused about the per-user settings), I start to think that maybe the easiest thing is to simply add
<Property Id="ALLUSERS" Value="1"/>
and probably also InstallScope="perMachine" inside the <Package> tag and make the installer a default per-machine installer, since for an installation without elevated privileges in a local folder (which I gather it is basically what a per-user installation does, with additional complications and difficulties of maintenance on top of it) one could rely on the portable version.
Or am I missing something?

The problem I thought we are trying to solve is that we currently install for a single user only. So you need to install MuseScore separately for each user on a shared system, or manually set up desktop shortcuts for them. As far as I am concerned, changing this to install for all users automatically (no option involved) would probably be fine for most people. If you don't use a shared machine, there is no visible difference. And if you do, it's less likely people would complain if it it installed for all users. It's easy enough for other users to delete a desktop shortcut they don't want.

I agree with Marc.

Therefore only setting the "InstallScope" as "perMachine" in the wix template should be enough, see http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/xsd/wix/package.html
To be redundant, we could also explicitly set ALLUSERS property to 1, see comment #5.

Well, that's *my* opinion anyhow. Would be interesting to get broader feedback - from the MuseScore community at large, also seeing if there are other projects that don't provide the option and checking what they do.

I tried what I was suggesting in comment #9 with MuseScore 2.1-dev: using both the options gives an error since ALLUSERS get defined twice. Using either one or the other creates an installer, which works (requiring elevated privileges).
Unfortunately, such an installer (in both cases) does not perform a disinstallation of previous MuseScore installation and I get two MuseScore (2.0.3 and 2.1) installations.
I think it comes from the fact that in the previous installer the ALLUSERS variable was left as an empty string, and according to this :

There are several common scenarios that an arise when the choice of per-user vs per-machine is given to the user:
1. Major Upgrades can Fail
If you use the Upgrade code feature of Windows Installer to perform a major upgrade the detection of the existing software will fail if: (a) the original software was installed with ALLUSERS="" and the new software has ALLUSERS=1 in its Property table or passed on the command line or (b) the original software was installed with ALLUSERS=1 and the new software has ALLUSERS="" or ALLUSERS is not defined in the Property table or on the command line.

So, does that mean you have to wait for 3.0 to implement this? If so I call that not the end of the world. It can wait.

Ah, I think it's a subtlety of terminology that confusing me. Yes, I think it is accurate to say we do a "full" per machine install *if* ALLUSERS is set to 1. I haven';t tried it personally. As an ordinary end user, I don't care so much about registry keys, I just care about whether I get a desktop icon, file associations, etc. I gather that is the *result* of using the proper registry keys. So with ALLUSERS="", we get a machine-wide install location, but the other trappings of installation are for the user only. With ALLUSERS="1", it's supposedly a full machine-wide install, but I haven';t had the opportunity to test if this really meas everyone gets the icon, file associations, etc. I'm kind of going on faith so far.

If all of this is true, and doing the "full" machine-wide install by default is not good because it doesn't replace the old installation, I wonder if we could consider providing two versions of the installer, with one clearly marked as for multi-user installations only and with an explicit advisory to manually uninstall the previous version first? Or provide a one-line batch file that does an install with ALLUSERS="1"?

Which is to say, I'm less concerned that we provide the option within the installer wizard itself than that we at least somehow make it known to interested users that the option exists.

Came up again in https://musescore.org/en/node/243771

Fwiw I have had very good luck with advanced installer. They do have a free version. I would be willing to take a run at it if ypu cam tell me what else I need besides the program folders...

Came up again in https://musescore.org/en/node/266695

Did anyone ever finish making an msi installer package that is for all users? I am trying to install MuseScore on laptops for students and ran into this issue. I need it in order to setup for device installation in Intune. Currently it only allows user based implementation and would install every time a new user logs into a different laptop.

As per further up there is a workaround:
MSIEXEC /i MuseScore.msi ALLUSERS="1"

We want to install to a large school 550+ Windows devices 1000+ students, in Microsoft Intune (attached screenshot) the MSI autodetects as Per user this can potentially lead to 500,000+ installs each time, we wipe the computers (yearly screenshot is less than 24hr after start of the year so low numbers) as you can see we have the ALLUSERS=1 workaround in as a command-line argument but as the evaluation context is set to per user it does not help prevent a revaluation/reinstall by Microsoft's Intune cloud service.

Just To request either a MSI that installs for all users (provide a second MSI if necessary) or better yet a modern microsoft MSIX or windows app store link. Both of which will provide a much better experience for cloud managed devices.

p.s. A windows app store install would allow auto update to end users and better install base metrics/usage data than just tracking website downloads.

For reasons I can't explain I have just found the musescore 3 windows app store link, just waiting for it to synchronise with Intune and will feed back if this version successfully installs per device but as app store is much more aggressive installing this won't be as much of an issue if its still per user.

Edit: :( app store is still version 3.3 not 3.6 any plans on when it will be updated to 3.6?

Reg. the Microsoft Store version of MuseScore: it is very outdated. see #313298: MuseScore in Microsoft Store is outdated, still at 3.3.4; remove link on Download page. If it ever does get updated though, then yes, that would solve your issue niclely. It isn't likely to happen though, at least not for any 3.x release anymore and so far I don't believe MuseScore 4 to be released as a Microsoft Store version either.

Thanks for the feedback, for any developers reading this app store version is going to be the best for any large deployment and individual users for that matter but important also to keep a .msix or .exe for people/countries that don't want a microsoft account.