Support user scoped installs on Windows

[byjrack]

What is the problem this feature will solve?

Currently nodejs and nvm-for-windows both require admin rights to install. This can be a barrier for some of our associates as they need assistance to install or for the version in our self-service installer to match their needs.

What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?

Using the ZIP file I didn't have any apparent issues unzipping to %APPDATA%\nodejs and manually adding to PATH so it seems like the installer could do a "per User" as well. Just needs an additional dialog in the Install script that triggers if it is installed to somewhere under AppData\Local or Program Files.

And if yes can you update the winget manifest to have a scope=user option so we can enable our non-admin users to install using winget?

What alternatives have you considered?

For us the workaround is packaging and installing as SYSTEM. Or have associates follow the steps around unzip and their User PATH updates.

We have considered wrapping the zip in some orchestration (VBS, Posh, etc) to make it click and go as well, but as a User.

[mscdex]

Feel free to submit a PR, but based on past feature requests for this same thing, it seems it's not going to be very easy (or maybe even possible) for various reasons.

[byjrack]

Any links to previous requests or work on the same theme? Tried to search previous issues and nothing jumped out.

Or if there are known issues with running node as a user vs system context that will be helpful to.

Let me track down the existing install script and toy with things with an eye toward PR.

[mscdex]

Here's one. Others can probably be found by searching for issues/PRs containing both the "windows" and "install" labels.

[byjrack]

Will take a look at the installer. The testing may be a bar too high though as ZIP based works fine as noted in that Issue. Or if installing the counters is critical path that's may be an admin only thing. Will dig in and see if I can figure out what it would take.

[byjrack]

Yup confirmed that a blocker is the ETW support from my first swing through. Registering the manifest is limited to Admin users. Can't find any indications that there is a way to register the ETW support scoped only to a user.

May start a Discussion to get folks' opinions on if Node w/o ETW support is valuable enough to justify an install path where that is left off. Hesitant on creating inconsistency like that though so closing this Issue out for now.