forum.vdsworld.com

[jules]

I agree with Prakash. I would even go so far as to say that Inno is probably THE BEST installer out there. I have frequently had to solve installer-related problems (the absurdly expensive InstallShield seems to be the worst, in my experience, why on earth do people use it?) but I don't think I have ever come across a problem with Inno.

It is interesting to write a setup program, but there are so many things that can go wrong, and have to be dealt with, that it is far from as simple a job as it looks when you start. If you want your programs to install trouble free on a wide variety of systems under different conditions then those years of experience that have gone into Inno Setup are working in your favour. If you are only programming for a hobby, and just want to give your programs to your friends, then by all means develop your own installer.

Actually I don't find the Inno Setup language too hard to understand. It's basically a parameter file, and one you have one that works for one program you can just copy and edit it to create another. I find it much easier than any of the GUI based setup builders where you have to go through a wizard every time.

[PGWARE]

InstallShield is complete garbage. I purchased it several years ago for nearly $1000 and I found it to be the most difficult to use, the 'ide' for Installshield is prone to crash often, the installers it creates are also not very reliable.

I've used dozens of install software and found Inno to be the best; have purchased numerous installers but Inno easily was the most reliable and easiest to use. I haven't had one user ever report a problem with one of my software programs that use Innosetup. On the other hand I haveused other installers previously and would get several reports a month that there are problems with the installer - this doesn't account for those that simply gave up and didn't bother emailing for help. It's worth having an installer that is reliable than having one you know each line of source code to.

As Jules points out an installer sounds like an easy piece of software to create; however there are a lot of features that need to be included - finding Windows versions correctly, finding if running on 32bit/64bit machines; editing ACL, determining correct install directories, editing registry keys, copying files in use, copy files on reboot, registering dlls/ocx, creating a stable wizard interface.

A single exe program is very useful but (especially with Vista) having multiple exe's for your software is a better way to go; exe's which run as a standard user and some exes which require elevation to handle writing to secure dirs/registry. Multiple exe's also help with memory footprint of the program as you do not load a single exe which does everything, rather you can split the code up into multiple exes which handle multiple tasks - each opening/closing when needed. Having the vds runtime is a good option here since you can have smaller exe's and a single runtime which is already loaded.