Why I hate that I don’t document things

A story about how I was 75% done with a project, and then I realized I had no idea what to do next.

The project

It was just a small simple project, just a simple installer tool called simply simple-installer. It was supposed to be a simple tool that would pack a zip with some metadata and install it.

It just needed to be able to: -[X] Pack a zip -[X] Unpack a zip -[X] Run as a CLI tool -[X] Be distributed through NuGet -[ ] Be able to run as a dotnet tool (global tool)

The problem

I got a lot done, had some menu options, could pack a zip, could unpack a zip, could run as a CLI tool. But then I realized I had no idea how to distribute it as a dotnet tool. And its not perfect, but I got it working, yet it need some more work.

How do I do this work? I have no idea, I don’t remember what I did, and I don’t have any documentation. No specs or anything like a an issue on github.

The solution

Write this blog post, and document the rest of the project. And then this can be the specs and documentation for the project.

Lets get started

The problem we are trying to solve (the specs)

Installers are unnecessary complex, and they usually have a lot of features that are not needed. So we want to make a simple installer tool that can do the following: Install a program, uninstall a program, update a program, and list installed programs.

The design

We want to make a CLI tool that can be used to install, uninstall, update and list installed programs. We want to make it as simple as possible, so we will use a simple zip file as the package format. The zip file will contain a manifest.json file that will contain the metadata for the package, and the files that will be installed.

Menu flow

graph TD
    A[Start Installer] -->|Check for ZIP file| B
    B -->|Yes| C[Show Menu with Install Option]
    B -->|No| D[Show Menu without Install Option]
    C -->|Select Install| E[Install Process]
    C -->|Select Pack| F[Pack Process]
    C -->|Select Exit| G[Exit Installer]
    D -->|Select Pack| F
    D -->|Select Exit| G
    E --> H[Return to Menu] -.-> B
    F --> |Pack completes| H 
    G --> I[End Installer]
    H --> C

[!NOTE] Use Chat Gpt-4 to generate some C# code

using System;
using System.IO;
using Spectre.Console;

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Func<bool> isZipFilePresent = () => File.Exists("yourfile.zip");
        Action showMenu = () => ShowMenuWithSpectre(isZipFilePresent());

        showMenu();
    }

    static void ShowMenuWithSpectre(bool isZipPresent)
    {
        var cmd = AnsiConsole.Prompt(
            new SelectionPrompt<string>()
                .Title("Choose an [green]option[/]:")
                .AddChoices(new[] { "Pack", "Exit" })
                .AddChoiceIf(isZipPresent, "Install"));

        switch (cmd)
        {
            case "Pack":
                Pack();
                break;
            case "Exit":
                Exit();
                break;
            case "Install":
                if (isZipPresent)
                {
                    Install();
                }
                break;
        }
    }

    static void Pack()
    {
        AnsiConsole.MarkupLine("[yellow]Packing...[/]");
        // Packing logic here
    }

    static void Install()
    {
        AnsiConsole.MarkupLine("[green]Installing...[/]");
        // Installation logic here
    }

    static void Exit()
    {
        AnsiConsole.MarkupLine("[red]Exiting...[/]");
        Environment.Exit(0);
    }
}