Pet Peeve: Can't Choose Install Location

I install all of my tools/utilities in my C:\Tools directory. I know where exactly every tool is and since many of them are command-line driven, the short location is nice. So it really irritates me when a tool (or any piece of software for that matter) does not allow you to choose its installation location and installs itself into C:\Program Files by default without any way to change it.

For example, the latest versions of NCover (1.5.4) and FxCop (1.35) take this approach. Both force me to install into C:\Program Files and I hate it with all that is good and holy. NCover I can *almost* excuse because it's just one guy and he's probably focusing on more important features than the installation directory. But FxCop is inexcusable, especially because all previous versions allowed you to pick the install location, not to mention that there is an entire team at Microsoft working on it. Why in the world this was changed I have no idea, but it pisses me off.

BTW, both versions I mentioned of NCover and FxCop are beta versions, but still, it's not that difficult.

Print | posted on Sunday, April 02, 2006 7:59 AM

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# FxCop 1.35 Beta 1 Analyzes .NET 1.x and 2.0, But Not Together

left by Dave Donaldson's Blog at 4/2/2006 8:05 AM

# re: Pet Peeve: Can't Choose Install Location

left by Jim Holmes at 4/2/2006 1:33 PM
Yep, it's stupid to force users into this kind of stuff. Not only does it kill flexibility for folks like you and me who like putting stuff in a handy location, but it can also wreak havoc for sysadmins who need to put things in different locations to meet corporate/company policies. I've got a long background in various admin roles and I *HATE* this silly constraint.

I had a huge fight with a tech lead on a project I was on some years ago. He refused to even consider that folks who owned systems this software would be landing on might want it somewhere else other than where he thought it should live.

Duh.

(Sorry, you obviously hit a pet peeve of mine. I'll switch to decaf now.)
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