Inno Setup is a free installer for Windows programs. First introduced in 1997, Inno Setup today rivals and even surpasses many commercial installers in feature set and stability.
Installations are created by means of scripts, which are ASCII text files with a format somewhat similar to .INI files. (No, it's not as complicated as you might be thinking!)
Inno Setup is a tool that helps you to create windows installers.
Scripts have an ".iss" (meaning Inno Setup Script) extension. The script controls every aspect of the installation. It specifies which files are to be installed and where, what shortcuts are to be created and what they are to be named, and so on.
Script files are usually edited from inside the Setup Compiler program. After you have finishing writing the script, the next and final step is select "Compile" in the Setup Compiler. What this does is create a complete, ready-to-run Setup program based on your script. By default, this is created in a directory named "Output" under the directory containing the script.
To give you an idea of how this all works, start the Setup Compiler, click File | Open, and select one of the script files in the Samples subdirectory located under the Inno Setup directory. (It may be helpful to use the sample scripts as a template for your own scripts.)
Here are some key features of "Inno Setup":
· Extensive support for installation of 64-bit applications on the 64-bit editions of Windows. Both the x64 and Itanium architectures are supported.
· Supports creation of a single EXE to install your program for easy online distribution. Disk spanning is also supported.
· Standard Windows 2000/XP-style wizard interface.
· Customizable setup types, e.g. Full, Minimal, Custom.
· Complete uninstall capabilities.
· Installation of files includes integrated support for "deflate", bzip2, and 7-Zip LZMA file compression. The installer has the ability to compare file version info, replace in-use files, use shared file counting, register DLL/OCX's and type libraries, and install fonts.
· Creation of shortcuts anywhere, including in the Start Menu and on the desktop.
· Creation of registry and .INI entries.
· Integrated Pascal scripting engine.
· Support for multilingual installs.
· Support for passworded and encrypted installs.
· Silent install and uninstall.
· Full source code is available (Borland Delphi 2.0-5.0).
What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]
Windows 7 changes:
· Setup, Uninstall and custom TOutputProgressWizardPage pages now make use of the new Windows 7 taskbar functionality to display progress, pause and error indicators on their taskbar buttons.
· Added new [Icons] section parameter: AppUserModelID. Specifies the Windows 7 Application User Model ID for the shortcut. Ignored on earlier Windows versions and on server versions. This parameter can include constants.
Windows 7 and Vista changes:
· Setup, Uninstall and custom TOutputProgressWizardPage pages now display pause and error indicators on their progress bars.
· Setup and Uninstall now call the Windows API function ShutdownBlockReasonCreate to set the shutdown block reason string to be displayed to the user if system shutdown is initiated. Note: this change is purely cosmetic, the fact that Setup and Uninstall block system shutdown is not new.
Pascal Scripting changes:
· TWinControl: Added new ParentBackground property. By setting this to False, you can ensure ...
