MSI can also be fetched (there are various ways) and installed (msiexec) command line, for both Linux and Windows I think we should have both methods available.
There are the people that don't care about not following the standards (typically those that misuse C:\ and put folders in there, then later they complain about problems like permissions; or /usr/local/meteor on Linux) and then there are the people that want everything to be tracked by the system so that seeing, changing and removing software can be done from one place (whether the control panel on Windows, or a package manager on Linux that respects the FHS standard).
I was just thinking that combining our forces would speed up getting us towards been integrated into Meteor itself, instead of ending up re-implementing each others work. You've started out the exact same way, a way which Meteor has sanctioned; whereas I've delayed adding any extra dependencies (like extra MSYS stuff) until it's really necessary too, so I'm trying to land some of those for 0.5.1. I might consider linking your fork, and/or we might look at each other for ideas; so we don't necessarily have to share the same code base; although I don't think it's the best approach forward.
Another thing worth mentioning, we're going to need better support from Node.js, MongoDB and Fibers if we really want to have this stable; especially the latter mentioned ones. On Windows 8 (dunno if this has been resolved by now) people need compatibility mode to get things working, on Windows XP newer versions of MongoDB simply don't work and on Windows Vista some users can't get Meteor to work at all but it's unclear if that's Fibers and Node.js, and who known how well Windows 7 is supported, I doubt if it would work for everyone there.
Thank you for mentioning me, and thanks in advance.
Best regards,
Tom Wijsman
PS: I'll do my best to make 0.5.1 somewhat more outstanding, despites being a Gentoo Linux these months; trying to get Meteor ebuild from my local overlay into Portage (their software repository / package manager).