developing an installer for an application

[lerroux]

hi,

i have made programs and installer packages using the package and deployment wizard... but this time i want to develop my own package and deployment... all i need to know is how the wizard works... or maybe how to do that... thax for helping

[RhinoBull]

If you planning on doing nthat in VB6 then there is a source project on which P&DW is based on and it's called Setup1.vbp.
Here is default location:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98\Wizards\PDWizard\Setup1

You can modify it as you wish to make it better.

[penagate]

Although, I might add that any program written in VB requires the VB runtime library, so it isn't the best idea to write an installer in VB as the user may not have the VB runtime on their machine and so be unable to install the program. If you really want to start one from scratch consider a language without dependencies, such as C/C++.

[k1ll3rdr4g0n]

What do you mean? You want to develop an Installer and you want us to do the research? Please read Installer Problems maybe this can help shed some light.

If you ask that kind of a question, an installer is way too complicated...

It's not that complicated...the hard part comes when you automatically install dependices.

You easily do the installer part in VB...
Make one file with the list of files.
Make another file containing all the binary data of all the files.
Then have the program split it out according to the file list.

Example:
1.readme.txt:20kb:ABCDEF123456
2.runme.exe:500kb:ABCDEF123456

#.filename:filesize:MD5 hash

this is a readme
wee
look this is an awsome readme
FF3434ABCDEFFkjlksjdkgjlkjasdkgljdsfaskldjg
askldjflksajdfl;kjds;lkfj;alskjdf;lkjasdg

(the part after the readme is runme.exe)
What your program can do is keep on taking data out of the one file until it matches the filesize and the MD5 hash.

You can even make this process better by adding compression to it.

@randem
Why discourage him from attempting to make it?

[kleinma]

Although, I might add that any program written in VB requires the VB runtime library, so it isn't the best idea to write an installer in VB as the user may not have the VB runtime on their machine and so be unable to install the program. If you really want to start one from scratch consider a language without dependencies, such as C/C++.
the VB setup project is setup1.exe, when you make a setup app in the PDW, it uses setup.exe (a C program) and setup1.exe (a vb program)

the setup.exe makes sure the runtimes are installed so that setup1.exe can run properly.

[penagate]

True, I forgot about that.

[MartinLiss]

And just in case it's not obvious, Setup1 being a VB program means you can modify it.

[brad jones]

OFF TOPIC:

Please note that I have removed a number of posts from this thread that were off topic in my opinion. Please focus on the original posters request or on topics related to that request. Please keep personal debates in Private Messages.

If you have any issue with this post or with my having deleted a post, you can PM me directly.

Brad Jones
Site Manager