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Remove perMachine option from Windows build config to allow non admin… #2581

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merged 1 commit into from
Jan 15, 2021

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sandymcfadden
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@sandymcfadden sandymcfadden commented Jan 15, 2021

Remove perMachine option from Windows build config to allow non admin installations

Fix

When installing on Windows it currently requires administrator privileges to complete the installation.

Resolve issue in #1181.

The issue above looks like this is caused by the build option perMachine being set to true. This forces to install for everyone on the machine which requires admin privileges. The default value for this option is false so I've removed the option and using this PR to build the Windows install so I can test the installation process.

Current install from exe Screenshots

Installing as Admin user
Installing as Admin user

Installing as Standard user
Installing as Standard user

Test

  1. Download the Windows exe install file generated from this PR
  2. Go through the installation as both an Administrator user and Standard Windows user
  3. See if it can be installed for current user without requiring admin privileges.

Todo

  • Add release notes

Release

@sandymcfadden sandymcfadden marked this pull request as ready for review January 15, 2021 18:08
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@belcherj belcherj left a comment

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Great change!

@sandymcfadden sandymcfadden merged commit b8968bf into develop Jan 15, 2021
@dmsnell dmsnell deleted the fix/install-win-without-admin branch January 19, 2021 01:36
@codebykat codebykat added this to the 2.6.0 milestone Jan 24, 2021
@pachlava
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[testing] Confirm that standard users is asked for admin privileges while installing 2.5.0, and not asked for them while installing 2.6.0-beta1. Tested on Win10

@thomasstache
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Should the merge have closed #1181? Or only when there's a release?

@sandymcfadden
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Thanks @thomasstache! You're right, that issue should have been closed. I've done it now.

@killerharri
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At the end this is a very bad solution :-(

Now it is no more possible to install the application to c:\program files, where the simplenote.exe would be write protected for non-admin users. Now every user on a computer needs to install this file into his personal user profile, where it is writeable and can be infected by malware. This removed the additional security improvement, which windows delivers when user non-admin accounts for normal work.
Btw. some security options prevent running *.exe files from the user profile, simply because this is often used by malware because it is working without admin rights.

Would it be possible to re-add the per-machine selection page and set the default to user profile? Or add some commandline optione to allow installation to c:\program files (with admin rights, of course)? The installer should require the elevation only if the per-machine installation is selected using this commandline option.

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6 participants