Implementing CLI Installation

[vramaiah]

This pulls upon the work here: #464 and enables a command line install.

Closes #11.

[calcmogul]

You don't need to close and reopen the PR btw.

[sciencewhiz]

This has not been tested though,

Please mark the PR as draft until you've had a chance to test.

[vramaiah]

This has not been tested though,

Please mark the PR as draft until you've had a chance to test.

How should I test this?

[calcmogul]

Run the installer with the CLI flags.

[vramaiah]

After testing, I have realized that VSCode is not being properly installed.

[vramaiah]

I chose to make each installation function refactored into its own class. I also made the InstallPageViewModel class an observer, following the design pattern, which is how I ended up ensuring that progress can be displayed.

[vramaiah]

An example of how the class for gradle installing can be used:

                    // Install Gradle
                    {
                        ProgressTotal = 11;
                        TextTotal = "Installing Gradle";
                        GradleSetupTask task = new GradleSetupTask(
                            configurationProvider
                        );

                        task.Attach(this);
                        await task.Execute(token);
                        if (token.IsCancellationRequested) break;
                        task.Detach(this);
                    }

The braces are to make task scoped

[calcmogul]

I assume the deduplication still needs to be done? That refactor ended up adding more code than it removed. Also, this PR needs to have main merged into it to fix conflicts.

[vramaiah]

I assume the deduplication still needs to be done?

yeah, I haven't actually removed duplicate code from CLI, only the GUI installer.

Also, this PR needs to have main merged into it to fix conflicts.

I might do that on Thanksgiving week, when I have more time

[vramaiah]

I actually didn't merge properly; merging this is going to be hard because this has been made for so long.

There are currently 11 new commits, and since I completely refactored the installation process...

[vramaiah]

Is there any way to uncommit the merge commit?

[calcmogul]

Option 1:
Find the commit from before the merge in git reflog's output, then git reset --hard commit-hash.

Option 2:
git revert -m N commit-hash where N is the parent you want to revert to and commit-hash is the commit hash of the merge commit.

[vramaiah]

I committed it from github web merge. Oh well.
EDIT: I seem to have removed it?

[vramaiah]

It's finally done!

[calcmogul]

I appreciate the time and effort you've put into this PR so far. However, I don't think it's taking the correct approach. The installer on the main branch is 3.5k lines of C# code, and this PR adds another 1.2k (34%) to implement what should ostensibly be up to 200 lines calling existing functions in a noninteractive, headless context. In my opinion, this PR currently adds repetitive boilerplate and technical debt we wouldn't want to merge and thus be responsible for maintaining.

Even if this PR were in a better state, we're now too close to the 2026 season to merge a change this large into a piece of infrastructure so central; it wouldn't get the amount of testing such a change warrants, so the risk is too high.

Given our installer requirements are changing for 2027 and beyond to serve both FRC and FTC, we're looking at replacing the Avalonia installer with something more standard like the Qt installer framework. See
2027 (view) and the Chief Delphi thread it links to for more discussion about it.

[Oblarg]

It looks like you've used AI to help draft this - that's fine, i'm totally in favor of AI assistance in coding. However, AI is really bad at code factoring/normalization, and we cannot/will not relax code standards to expect less than handwritten and properly-deduplicated code.

I suggest giving this a comprehensive refactor pass; you should be able to reduce the number of LOC substantially, and make it read a lot more succinctly, without affecting the functionality.