Packaging for Windows, again

Ref: Packaging for Windows - #16 by John_Nagle

Was looking for a solution to this last year.

There's a new project working on this, developing "cargo dist". but they haven't gotten far enough to generate real Windows or Mac installers. Just "executable .zip files", an alien concept to most end users.

They could use help from someone who lives in the Windows ecosystem, which I do not. It's a lack that we can't build cross-platform Rust programs that Just Work.

cargo-wix is capable of making MSI installers by utilizing the WiX toolset. If/when the toolset gets support for MSIX, I don't doubt cargo-wix will follow quickly behind. (Or might even automatically "support" it immediately, if it's only a difference in the wcx configuration requiring no changes from cargo-wix.)

OK, but not fully cross platform.

"The cargo-wix project can be installed on any platform supported by the Rust programming language, but the Wix Toolset is Windows only; thus, this project is only useful when installed on a Windows machine."

cargo-dist is also explicitly not cross-platform. Instead, it utilizes CI runners to generate builds.

Right. It's frustrating. I can generate a good Windows executable on Linux, but can't package it into a standard installer.

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