Installer for MacType

[sammilucia]

This issue is to discuss and decide an installer for future versions of MacType.

The v2017.628.0 installer (Advanced Installer) has had some issues with compatibility between versions of itself making it difficult to maintain, so may not be suitable.

Must-haves

• Multi-language
• Easy to maintain
• Low-cost or ideally free / open source
• Service creation
• Registry manipulation
• Reliable removal of old versions (including stopping services and unloading DLLs)

Nice-to-haves

• Online/live updates via SSL
• No scripting required
• Bug reporting
• Package signing

Potential Candidates

Visual Studio Installer Deployment

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-studio-2010/2kt85ked(v%3dvs.100)

Visual Studio ClickOnce

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/deployment/publishing-clickonce-applications?view=vs-2017

Advanced Installer

https://www.advancedinstaller.com

Inno Setup

http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

NSIS

https://www.pawelporwisz.pl/nsis/nsis_en.php

InstallAware Free

https://www.installaware.com/

• I can't see the differences between Free and Express - does Free have Web Updates?

Not suitable

• WiX (http://wixtoolset.org/) - Scripted only

[snowie2000]

Thank you for your awesome job.

Of course, I would like to switch to something more stable, such as innosetup, but the new installer has to be compatible with the old one. It needs to

• properly uninstall the previous one
• get the installation location of the previous installer
• get the installed component if possible
• implement all features needed.

Ah... none of which is my thing... 😞

[sammilucia]

I don't mind learning scripting for this... I guess once the script is written it shouldn't be difficult to maintain, it's just a pain to write because we'll only look at it infrequently and forget the language...

InstallAware and Advanced Installer both look good to me

[snowie2000]

Advanced installer is what I used so far and is very problematic. Maybe I didn't use it right?

[sammilucia]

@snowie2000 I think we should look at InstallAware Free, it looks similar in terms of features and is no scripting.

I'm happy to to take the lead on working out the installer if you like. I've always wanted to do it but never had a reason... Can you send me the scripts/source for the Advanced Installer package so I can analyse?

[sammilucia]

Or add them to github and I'll work directly in the repo. Whatever's easy for you.

Please also tell me the version of Advanced Installer you used if you can work it out - because you said new versions weren't compatible?

[snowie2000]

It's on my private git.
I sent you everything you need via email.

[sammilucia]

Okay ta ++

[mufunyo]

As an end user, I have to say NSIS seems to be by far the fastest / cleanest / most hassle free installer I have ever used. As a programmer, the last (and only) installer software I've used was WISE, which is not free, so irrelevant in this discussion.

[sammilucia]

@mufunyo I agree on NSIS.

@snowie2000 NSIS supports all the features, except it's scripted. I'm happy to convert the Advanced Installer aip to an NSIS script, it should be easy to maintain from there looking at the scripting language it's pretty readable.

Looks like I can either build a new installer for beta2 for release basically today using Advanced Installer ... or probably an NSIS installer with a days work (so I'd have it ready in a week) ... Given AI has a history of some problems, maybe we try NSIS

Wdyt?

[snowie2000]

You have plenty of time to try, and I agree that NSIS is a good idea to work on.
Mactype is not ready for a public release yet since there are still some major problems to fix like #437 and #440, #439, and most seriously #271

[sammilucia]

After further investigation I was actually surprised to prefer Inno Setup. NSIS is powerful however some elements of the scripting language are unclear without knowing the language schema, especially with multi-language installs. Whereas Inno Setup I already have a rough working installer and so far it seems to support the same features.

I may change my mind if I hit a blocking issue with Inno Setup.

Thanks for the input guys!! Closing issue as complete.