Installers

cornbb

Hi guys,

I need to choose an installation solution for the Windows version of the product I'm developing. I'll need to install an executable, a few DLLs, registry entries, help files, quite a few resource files, the usual stuff. A lot of audio files will be included so its possible the installer will weigh in at over 3GB.

Obvious choices seem to be InstallShield, Wise, Windows Installer etc. Ideally the solution I'll pick will be low cost (which would seem to rule out InstallShield!) and have a gentle learning curve, as the clock is ticking. It will also need to have the option to be scriptable/command line-driven as we want the creation of the installer to be inserted seamlessly into our build process.

So does anyone have general advice on which way to go? I'm looking at Windows Installer at the moment, the MS documentation is typically confusing but it appears to have everything I'm looking for including some integration with Visual Studio.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

pH

I've used nullsoft for some small install jobs and quite liked it found it easy to use. It's open source and completely free.

However a quick look at the docs says it's limited to 2GB, you might get around this by packaging some stuff separately anyway as 3GB in a single installer is a monster!

http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page

cornbb

pH wrote: »

I've used nullsoft for some small install jobs and quite liked it found it easy to use. It's open source and completely free.

However a quick look at the docs says it's limited to 2GB, you might get around this by packaging some stuff separately anyway as 3GB in a single installer is a monster!

http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page

Thanks, I'll look into that. Yes, 3GB is indeed a monster. The product is currently Mac-only and the Apple Installer handles it ok though. I'm planning on discarding a lot of the stuff included before the Windows release though, to bring it to maybe half that size.

NeverSayDie

Yeah, I've used Nullsoft installer before as well, very useful, very straightforward but pretty flexible. Haven't tried it with anything on that scale though.

lynchie

Yup nsis is the way to go. Wouldn't pay for a commercial solution as nsis can pretty much do everything you need in an installer.

stevenmu

Have used nullsoft, very simple alright, but since you mention Visual Studio integration, well Windows Installer has that and is incredibly simple to use. If you have your solution in Visual Studio already then all you really need to do is add an installer project (the same way you'd add any other project) and it should automatically pick up all of the output from your projects. You can easily add in other resource files just go to the file system section and add them in, desktop/start menu shortcuts etc. Couldn't be easier. Not sure if there's a file size limit or not, but it does give you the option of building everything into a single msi package (with various compression options) or of just leaving the files out seperately.

If you're already using Visual Studio it's certainly worth trying out.

edit: forgot to mention it also has a really simple graphical editor for adding registry entries

cornbb

stevenmu wrote: »

Have used nullsoft, very simple alright, but since you mention Visual Studio integration, well Windows Installer has that and is incredibly simple to use. If you have your solution in Visual Studio already then all you really need to do is add an installer project (the same way you'd add any other project) and it should automatically pick up all of the output from your projects. You can easily add in other resource files just go to the file system section and add them in, desktop/start menu shortcuts etc. Couldn't be easier. Not sure if there's a file size limit or not, but it does give you the option of building everything into a single msi package (with various compression options) or of just leaving the files out seperately.

If you're already using Visual Studio it's certainly worth trying out.

NSIS does look attractive, I'm a fan of lightweight open-source products, but the 2GB limit looks to be a show stopper. Although the installer size may prove to be a problem no matter which solution I go with - I see Windows installer insists on copying the whole msi file to a temp directory during installation

didn't realise Windows Installer had seamless integration with Visual Studio though, that does look attractive. I was reading MSDN documentation on Windows Installer and it started to give me a headache (as MSDN tends to do). I guess I need to read up on this in more detail... Cheers for all the advice everyone.

stevenmu

The documentation is very unclear alright, I remember that from the first time I looked into it. Best idea is to just dive in and give it a go, or maybe google for some tutorials.

Copying the msi to a temp file would be a pain at that kind of size, but I think if you set it to not bundle everything into the msi file then it doesn't need to do that, it just copies the files directly to the install location. I think that's how it works anyway, you'd need to check that.

stevenmu

Oh and if your app is written in .Net or uses SQL Server Express it can include bootstrappers that will automatically detect them and install them if needed.

Red Alert

I'd definitely go for MSI/Windows or else Nullsoft, it's just not worth paying for either of the others unless either MSI or Nullsoft doesn't have the functionality.

Sneaky_Russian

Also check out WiX

http://wix.sourceforge.net/

cornbb

I've played around with Windows Installer within Visual Studio and it seems to have everything I need. I'll need to do a test build with a huge amount of dummy data (which I'll hopefully be able to package into a seperate CAB file) so as long as that doesn't cause complications it looks like its the way to go.

Hobbes

Another one is Inno Setup.

http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

freeware as well.

Tar.Aldarion

Look into wix, the nice gui I got before for it made it really easy...