Reputation: 5725

Good software packager other than InstallShiled

Does anyone know any good software packager other than InstallShield?

What software did MS use to create the Visual Studio 2005/2008 installers?

Also, does it make sense to just use a "general purpose" language like C# to create an installer rather than using software packagers?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 1

Answers (7)

Alexis Wilke

Reputation: 20720

I wrote wpkg, that you can find here http://windowspackager.org/ (it is GPL) and is a clone of dpkg + APT both together. So it packages and then manages any number of packages in repositories that you can update + upgrade in an automated way. As long as you can install your project files (i.e. make install type of thing) then you'll be able to generate packages in no time.

If you know / use Linux and line their way of handling their software installations (dpkg + apt-get or rpm + yum) then you'll like wpkg since it is a duplicate of that sort of functionality.

The software version is still 0.x.x but it is already in production (very stable as I have strong unit tests to prove that a very large set of functions are working as expected.)

Note that wpkg not only works under Microsoft Windows to package binary objects, it also works under Linux, MacOS/X, and compiles + runs under a few other Unices.

The wpkg implementation includes full support for batch scripts (shell scripts for Unices) to automatically initialize or finalize package installations. This includes the ability (for example) to start a server automatically once the server binaries where installed.

We are also working on a graphical tool, pkg-explorer, that can be used to ease the management of an installation target (you can have as many installation targets on a single computer, as long as you don't install software that require the use of uniquely available resources such as a DVD writer or port 80 on your network.)

The project comes with different tools. One allows you to transform your list of projects in a graph representing the dependency tree of your repository. Another creates a list of HTML files so you can list in an easy to access all the packages that you have available in your repository.

Upvotes: 0

tablebubble

Reputation: 11

NSIS has a front end app, which is now been distributed for free, called venis http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Venis_IX. venis abstracted the details of nsis.

Upvotes: 1

Alberto Rubini

Reputation: 655

I try much tools and programs to create a windows installer package and i concluded that Advanced Installer is easiest ad intuitive to use! I use it from several years and i've found few problems.

Another factor in his favor is a fast and efficient technical support.

I hope this help

Upvotes: 2