Viktor Szakáts wrote:
Exactly, plus some more:
- You often need to be admin to do it. (if you rename Harbour
installer to setup.exe, it will ask for password, Windows does
this "intelligently" by itself)
- They sometimes fail if you change the default install path.
- You cannot be sure you've installed for yourself or for all users.
Sometimes the programs aren't sure either, and some bits are
here, some others there.
- You install an upgrade and you don't know if it has overwritten
the other package, or extended it, and many times you get
an additional entry in the add/remove programs list.
- If you uninstall, will it remove a) the upgrade only b) the
whole last version c) all files belonging to this program.
Will any additional add/remove program list entries removed?
- Will it need a reboot?
- Many times the whole install package is archived in some
buried OS directories, and it will never be deleted from there.
- Many times it fails to remove its own temp files.
- Sometime you need to unpack the install, _then_ be able to run it.
After that you need to clean up yourself, of course, sometimes
as admin user.
- You have to go get the install packages and go through all
installs and updates _again_ if you change computer (or OS
version).
- And we didn't even touch dependencies and .dlls.
Worst nightmare :) MS is strongly convinced that users like this
(they haven't seen better), so don't expect this to change anytime
soon.
Boy, isn't this the truth?
I have started using Inno installer on Windows. You can use it's built
in scripting language to do whatever you want. It compiles the
installation into a setup.exe for you. This contains all the files and
the script to do whatever you want. I have even seen it detect missing
.net versions and offer to go fetch and install them. As far as
uninstall goes, you can tell it exactly what to do. It's similar to
Installshield in many ways except the one I find most important...
source code is available (not open source) and the price is right... free.
This is a very nice installer for Windows.
http://www.innosetup.com/isinfo.php
And, there is a support community built up around it. This allows you to
have an expert build you your first scripts and then you can expand them
from there. Makes it a lot quicker to get a basic install working.
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