A good free/inexpensive installer creator

[R0B]

[esw]

I have used , which is nice, but it adds lots of space (something like 600kb) to your program. Another free one is the Winamp installer, . It is tiny, like 64kb, but I have never actually used it.

[James S]

EZSetup, or something like that, seems to be popular.

[jadam1]

doesnt he mean for PocketPC's though?

[fused]

dontcha just make a .cab file and feed it to activesync, or something simple like that?

[Dan East]

Right, you basically just launch the Application Manager on the PC and pass it a CAB file. The purpose of an installer like EZSetup is to:

Compress the CAB file(s).

Enforce Readme file and EULA.

Automatically launch Application Manager with the appropriate command line params.


I use EZSetup to install DEXplor. The DEXplor installer contains 3 CAB files which total 1.5 MB, while the EXE installer is only 500k.

Dan East

[esw]

Oh, ok, I thought you were talking about regular PC applications. Of course, you can probably use the ones I suggested, but ez-setup seems to be the standard and easiest route.

[Conan]

EZSetup takes the CAB file and your text information for the user & builds a proper setup.exe. You can't add in your own screens/logos to the installer.

It's a current product recently updated.

My article covers the basics. You need to see some sample .INF files for the CAB wizard program. With CE you have to deal with different CPU types if you are targeting the older hardware unless you want to make separate installers. I suggest you go the separate installer route if your game is huge

[Dan East]

The source code to EZSetup is available. If you have VC++ 6.0 you can create your own version of the installer to do / show whatever you want.

Dan East

[Conan]

Yea, I looked at the source but could not see how to 'interface with the process. I will have another look before I need a new installer.