How about a bounty for a new windows installer using inno setup ?

There are several issues related to the nsis-based windows installer (even on bugzilla). The problem that happened last Fall with a virus false detection may happen again. "Braddr" proposed to handle digital signatures in case it would involve payment.

Programming an installer is a small job but it has a long term impact on the user experience. Worth 100€ imo.

On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 09:24:59 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
> How about a bounty for a new windows installer using inno setup ?
>
> There are several issues related to the nsis-based windows installer (even on bugzilla). The problem that happened last Fall with a virus false detection may happen again. "Braddr" proposed to handle digital signatures in case it would involve payment.
>
> Programming an installer is a small job but it has a long term impact on the user experience. Worth 100€ imo.

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16405
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15375
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14847
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14849
https://forum.dlang.org/post/akxxnjatohebpmhbeqip@forum.dlang.org

On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 09:24:59 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
> How about a bounty for a new windows installer using inno setup ?
>
> There are several issues related to the nsis-based windows installer (even on bugzilla). The problem that happened last Fall with a virus false detection may happen again. "Braddr" proposed to handle digital signatures in case it would involve payment.
>
> Programming an installer is a small job but it has a long term impact on the user experience. Worth 100€ imo.

Any particular reason to use Inno Setup over for example Wix Toolset?

On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 11:19:31 UTC, Kjartan F. Kvamme wrote:
> On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 09:24:59 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
>> How about a bounty for a new windows installer using inno setup ?
>>
>> There are several issues related to the nsis-based windows installer (even on bugzilla). The problem that happened last Fall with a virus false detection may happen again. "Braddr" proposed to handle digital signatures in case it would involve payment.
>>
>> Programming an installer is a small job but it has a long term impact on the user experience. Worth 100€ imo.
>
> Any particular reason to use Inno Setup over for example Wix Toolset?

D has `extern(Pascal)`, which means the the new setup program could be mostly coded in a D dll used by the innosetup script.

On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 11:39:37 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
> On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 11:19:31 UTC, Kjartan F. Kvamme wrote:
>> On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 09:24:59 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
>>> How about a bounty for a new windows installer using inno setup ?
>>>
>>> There are several issues related to the nsis-based windows installer (even on bugzilla). The problem that happened last Fall with a virus false detection may happen again. "Braddr" proposed to handle digital signatures in case it would involve payment.
>>>
>>> Programming an installer is a small job but it has a long term impact on the user experience. Worth 100€ imo.
>>
>> Any particular reason to use Inno Setup over for example Wix Toolset?
>
> D has `extern(Pascal)`, which means the the new setup program could be mostly coded in a D dll used by the innosetup script.

I have a little guy in my  town, he thinks he's a genius.
This job is for him. He'll start the hard way.

On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 14:42:26 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
> I have a little guy in my  town, he thinks he's a genius.

i'm not living there!

On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 15:24:20 UTC, ketmar wrote:
> On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 14:42:26 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
>> I have a little guy in my  town, he thinks he's a genius.
>
> i'm not living there!

yes, i know ketmar.if you know me,dont bother.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XVQ5GScEoI&index=15&list=PLFp2qxgnM_2MmFfd_hoWor6CHS80i5-Yq

On 12/5/2016 3:19 AM, Kjartan F. Kvamme wrote:
> On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 09:24:59 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
>> How about a bounty for a new windows installer using inno setup ?
>>
>> There are several issues related to the nsis-based windows installer
>> (even on bugzilla). The problem that happened last Fall with a virus
>> false detection may happen again. "Braddr" proposed to handle digital
>> signatures in case it would involve payment.
>>
>> Programming an installer is a small job but it has a long term impact
>> on the user experience. Worth 100€ imo.
>
> Any particular reason to use Inno Setup over for example Wix Toolset?

<Delurk>
In my last job I worked on installers (which I didn't like but someone had to do it.) I recommend WiX over Inno. The main reason is that WiX produces an MSI and Inno doesn't. An MSI is just a data file, not an executable, and is thus better for security. I normally wrapped the MSI in a bootstrap exe. But we had one customer that was part of the government and wouldn't accept anything but an MSI.
If you want, you can generate the XML with a program. I just didn't because I figured it was easier to modify if you can directly see the XML. My install builder was actually a combination of C# and WiX. I never found scripts to be flexible enough and it's just one more language to know.

Jim
</Delurk>

On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 19:33:33 UTC, Jim Hewes wrote:
> On 12/5/2016 3:19 AM, Kjartan F. Kvamme wrote:
>> On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 09:24:59 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
>>> How about a bounty for a new windows installer using inno setup ?
>>>
>>> There are several issues related to the nsis-based windows installer
>>> (even on bugzilla). The problem that happened last Fall with a virus
>>> false detection may happen again. "Braddr" proposed to handle digital
>>> signatures in case it would involve payment.
>>>
>>> Programming an installer is a small job but it has a long term impact
>>> on the user experience. Worth 100€ imo.
>>
>> Any particular reason to use Inno Setup over for example Wix Toolset?
>
> <Delurk>
> In my last job I worked on installers (which I didn't like but someone had to do it.) I recommend WiX over Inno. The main reason is that WiX produces an MSI and Inno doesn't. An MSI is just a data file, not an executable, and is thus better for security. I normally wrapped the MSI in a bootstrap exe. But we had one customer that was part of the government and wouldn't accept anything but an MSI.
> If you want, you can generate the XML with a program. I just didn't because I figured it was easier to modify if you can directly see the XML. My install builder was actually a combination of C# and WiX. I never found scripts to be flexible enough and it's just one more language to know.
>
> Jim
> </Delurk>

You can also create a WiX installer out of an InnoSetup installer.
I think it's more important to decide upon the feature set, readability and the time needed to build an installer.
Have you experience with both? I only have experience with NSIS and InnoSetup and in InnoSetup the feature set for Windows is really good and the readability is good.
I wouldn't advise doing the coding part externally in D this makes things much more complicated than it should be. Stick with what's supported by the tool.

On 12/6/2016 12:21 AM, Thomas Mader wrote:
>
> You can also create a WiX installer out of an InnoSetup installer.
> I think it's more important to decide upon the feature set, readability
> and the time needed to build an installer.
> Have you experience with both? I only have experience with NSIS and
> InnoSetup and in InnoSetup the feature set for Windows is really good
> and the readability is good.

I started out by using InstallShield some years ago and got battle scars there. I don't recommend that. I used NSIS a little because a company we partnered with required it but I'm no authority on NSIS or Inno.

It really depends on how complicated your particular install is and where you expect it to go in the future. If you're just copying a few files then anything will work. I don't mean to make too big a deal out of it if the requirements are really simple.

Personally I think it's better in the long run to generate an MSI for several reasons you can probably look up yourself---security, ability to rollback (installation is a transaction), appears in Programs and Features, transforms, etc.

> I wouldn't advise doing the coding part externally in D this makes
> things much more complicated than it should be. Stick with what's
> supported by the tool.

I'm not suggesting you necessarily use D together with something like NSIS. But you do want to have a one-button automated build process, not just for convenience but for repeatability. That's important. Soon you will want to get away from the tool's own GUI and run things programmatically.

After having not-so-good experiences with InstallShield I looked at things like SCons and msbuild, which was just coming out at the time. (This was a while ago). I tried msbuild but it didn't have modules to support many of the things I needed to do. Things like code-signing with a verisign signature, injecting data and files into exe resources, etc. Fortunately you can build your own custom modules using C# which is what I tried. But the process of transferring variables back and forth from the script to C# for every custom module was painful and I thought, "if I just do this all in C# it will be much easier". So I switched. I used C# not only to call on the WiX tools to run them, but to easily manipulate pathname and filename strings, which were different because I needed to build different configurations for different customer companies. And I also needed to build different combinations of language localization. I could use .NET to build a nice GUI for selecting configurations, and C# to call the Windows API when needed, move files around, anything.

You may also run into issues when you need to do complicated updates and there are already earlier versions in the field. You may want to remove features, but your installer has to both update existing users in addition to supporting new users. It's hard to predict the future though so I won't say much about it except that it helps to have a more powerful tool when you run into such situations.

The scripting-type tools are tempting because they're easy and no one wants to spend any time on installers. It's usually something that people hope to just slap on at the end and it often gets underestimated. But as I said, maybe it IS easy if you're just copying files and you will only ever have one configuration. So it depends.

Jim