Installer Packages

RedEyeCoder · Post by **RedEyeCoder** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 7:54 am

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone is interested in sharing their experiences with the various installer packages out there?

I have only ever used NSIS for deployment, however I have started the search for something better. Install Shield is obvious "end game" package however the price is fairly off putting.

SunSailor · Post by **SunSailor** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 11:07 am

What's so bad about the NSIS thing? To me, it seems it can compete quite well with InstallShield, especially, as it is free. What's the drawback for you? And what would be your needs for a more sophisticated solution?

capture · Post by **capture** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 11:52 pm

Inno Setup has met all of my needs in the past, but it only creates a .exe install file which is not exactly what you are looking for. As for NSIS I have never heard of it, but after just looking it up now their website makes it look like a very viable option. I've also heard that there is WixEdit, which people say is very good.

Klaim · Post by **Klaim** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 12:32 am

A similar and recent thread on the same subject on the IndieGamer forum : http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=13224

NSIS seems popular.
Hope it helps.

RedEyeCoder · Post by **RedEyeCoder** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 2:09 am

SunSailor wrote:What's so bad about the NSIS thing? To me, it seems it can compete quite well with InstallShield, especially, as it is free. What's the drawback for you? And what would be your needs for a more sophisticated solution?

With NSIS it seems that anything more than an extremely basic installer/file setup requires a decent amount of manual script editing. I can make multiple installers during a week and the process is erroneous and time costly.

I am definitely looking for a more UI orientated approach over scripting.

Klaim wrote:A similar and recent thread on the same subject on the IndieGamer forum : http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=13224

NSIS seems popular.
Hope it helps.

Thanks for that, I read through all of that and it seems Inno and NSIS are the preferred candidates.

It looks the most people would use Inno except that NSIS has a smaller disk footprint - for me I could could not care less about 300k extra.

Any extra information from people will be appreciated!

twilight17 · Post by **twilight17** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:38 pm

Heres some: http://www.thefreecountry.com/programming/setup.shtml

and some more:
http://www.clickteam.com/eng/installcreator.php
http://installer.excelsior-usa.com/
http://www.installjammer.com/
http://bitrock.com/download_overview.html

(Haven't tested any of those yet)

RedEyeCoder · Post by **RedEyeCoder** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 7:36 am

Thanks for the links, BitRock InstallBuilder looks semi-reputable, might take a peek at that one

Post by **sinbad** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:56 pm

NSIS is great but can't do Windows Installer tasks (such as updating manifests), so you have to call external redist executables to sort those dependencies out which is less convenient.

WiX is open source and can do Windows Installer stuff, at the expense of being a bit less easy to customise than NSIS.

Post by **Jabberwocky** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:50 pm

capture wrote:Inno Setup has met all of my needs in the past, but it only creates a .exe install file which is not exactly what you are looking for. As for NSIS I have never heard of it, but after just looking it up now their website makes it look like a very viable option. I've also heard that there is WixEdit, which people say is very good.

I'm building my first installer, and I decided to use Inno Setup.

There is a gui editor (ISTool script editor) which makes the installer creation pretty easy, and the documentation is very good.

It has the same problem as NSIS (can't do windows installer tasks) - sort of. It can run .msi files, but not .msm files (used for the VC++ redistributables).

Ogre Forums

Installer Packages

Installer Packages

yeah

Re: yeah