[llvm-dev] LLVM installer on Windows 10 64bit (and possibly others) claims to add self to path environment variable and to create a desktop shortcut but does neither.

[Jesse Bollinger via llvm-dev]

This isn't really a bug within LLVM itself, so I wasn't sure where to
report this and don't have much reason to create an account right now
either. So, I'm sending it here, hopefully not in error.

Basically, as the subject line says, the LLVM binary install for Windows 10
64 bit (and likely other Windows distributions too) fails to set up
environment variables and the shortcut, contrary to what it claims to do.

In contrast, minutes before installing LLVM on this system, I installed
CMake and that had no trouble at all modifying the path and creating a
shortcut. Thus, the problem is very likely in the LLVM installer and not my
system.

I also recall the installer failing to change the path a few years back on
a Windows 7 laptop I tried and I had to do it manually then too.

While this issue is easily manually corrected, the existence of this bug in
the install process is bound to decrease user retention among new
inexperienced users significantly.

Many newbie programmers won't be properly aware of how the path environment
variable works and thus will just assume that Clang is bad/broken and not
worth the trouble and then uninstall. So, this "trivial" issue actually
probably has a big impact on Windows adoption among new users and needs
fixed.

Every little bit of friction in a process and every bit of uncertainty a
user may have in how to move forward with a system will always damage
retention/adoption rates. These little details do matter, even though many
big open source software projects neglect these kinds of usability and
communcation details.

Anyway, have a great day/etc everyone.

PS: I love how much better Clang's error messages are and how you can read
the AST etc.
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