Re: Require suggestions on feature #5766

Hi

On Wed, 4 Dec 2024 at 05:19, Anil Sahoo <anil(dot)sahoo(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
> For Windows, I checked how pgAdmin works for machine-wide installations as
> admin1 (Administrator), and there is another admin user like admin2
> (Administrator), and normal users are user1 and user2. When logged in as
> other mentioned users, I was able to use pgAdmin, but when I tried to
> upgrade pgAdmin as admin2 from v8.12 to v8.13, I faced the below error:
>
> "An error occurred while trying to replace the existing file:
>
> DeleteFile failed; code 5.
>
> Access is denied."
>
> And if I cancel installation, then run pgAdmin, v8.12 is getting
> corrupted and giving
>
> "The pgAdmin 4 server could not be contacted:
> C:\Program Files (x86)\pgAdmin 4\python\python.exe: can't open file ‘ C:\\
> Program Files (x86)\\pgAdmin
>
> 4\\web\\pgAdmin4.py: [Errno 2] No such file or directory."
>
> For user-level installation, everything is working fine for different
> users.
>
> I have checked some of the desktop applications that are being built with
> Electron, like VS Code and Postman.
>
> *How VS Code works is,*
>
> They have 2 different installers, one for user level and another for
> system level.
>
> When I installed the VS Code system installer on admin1, it was working
> fine, and I was able to check for updates, and for admin2 and user1, it is
> available, working fine and able to check for updates, not able to update
> as I am in the latest version. (Note: not found system installers for older
> versions, but user installers are available)
>
> When I installed the VS Code user installer on admin1, it was working
> fine, and VS Code says when running it as an administrator in a user setup
> installation, updates will be disabled.
>
> When I tried to install the user installer on user1, it was working fine
> and able to check for updates.
>
> *How Postman works is,*
>
> When I installed Postman on admin1, it was available for admin2 also. It
> was working fine, and checking for auto updates was also working fine for
> both admins. It is not available for normal users when installed for admins.
>
> When I installed Postman for user1, it was available only for the current
> user, and checking for updates was working fine.
>
> So please give your suggestions on which approach to follow.
>
Postman seems to be a nice model to follow, though it will require us to
check if the current user has permissions to update the installation. That
might be tricky to get right.

I would suggest that for the initial version we simply disable auto-update
for machine wide installations, and think about supporting them for admin
users in the future when we can properly check that we have the desired
permissions. We should also consider changes to the installer - e.g.
perhaps make the per-user installation the default, and (if possible) add a
note under the machine-wide option to warn the user that auto updates would
be disabled.

Thanks, Dave.

--
Dave Page
pgAdmin: https://www.pgadmin.org
PostgreSQL: https://www.postgresql.org
pgEdge: https://www.pgedge.com