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Choice of application installer?

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sunlitlaz:
Hi all, I am curious as to what everyone's opinion is regarding installation builders for the apps that you create.  I have done some searching through these forums and found a few ideas, but I thought I would directly ask what any/every one's pick is.  What is it that you use when you are ready to package that great application for the masses?  I'll start with my own experiences:

I work mostly with VB6 for Windows apps, so these are geared towards that.


* Naturally I have used the package and deploy wizard in VB6, but it seems to have some issues, plus it isn't very customizable.
* Purchased Installshield Express 11 a few years back and it worked pretty well, though it was a bit of a pain to work with.  Looked at upgrading to the latest version and it's along the lines of $599 which is a little steep for one guy that does this for fun in his spare time.
* Have used the Visual Studio Installer that came out in the .NET VS releases and it shows promise, but still I think it would be nice to have something more rebust and customizable.
* Am now trying the free version of Advanced Installer, and even though $249 for pro is a bit more than I'd like to pay, it looks like it is one heckuva install builder that can do darn near anything you want to with it.
That's where I am at now, anyone else want to put in their 2cp worth?

Thanks  :D  :Thmbsup:

lanux128:
as an end-user, i prefer mostly extractable zip installers. unless the installer package has some customised dll or activex stuff, zip installers mean i can extract the contents and run the .exe without needing to install it.

mouser:
I use Inno Setup, with the ISTool script editor (download the ispack on this page).  It's not the most friendly thing to use, and it's not perfect, but it is free and flexible.

majoMO:
I use CreateInstall FREE. Easy-to-use and free.

There are payware versions also: CreateInstall Light and CreateInstall.

MilesAhead:
For small installs I'm with mouser.  You can also download ISSkin, which is a free skin library for Inno Setups. Plus, esp. if you know Pascal, the built-in scripting language lets you do lots of stuff to customize things.  For example, you can check the uninstall string for your application to know if it's already installed, offer to keep or delete registry settings when uninstalling etc..

One trick I used to like to include in my Tray applications was a small app killer that would check if the app is running, and if so, kill the app and then move the mouse over the Tray icons to get rid of the Tray Icon that hangs when an app is killed.  So many times people have a Tray app that starts with Windows, they forget it's running, and when they uninstall it gets an error.  This way I pass the name of the app to the app killer as part of the uninstall.  The Tray app is killed before deletion is attempted.

Anyway, seemed pretty cool when I was doing it but more and more people just want to unzip as lanux128 said.  I wouldn't get into any of the elaborate database driven installers unless you have a large app with lots of components or can afford a tool that does all the grunt work for you.  The more moving parts the more stuff there is to break.

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