[Interest] Installer Recommendations

[Bo Thorsen]

On 02/19/2015 02:09 AM, Jason Kretzer wrote:
> Good day all!
>
> I am seeking recommendations for an installer (does not have to be free)
> program that I can use to deploy a Qt Application(5.3) and compiled with
> VS2010 to Windows 7.  I am not sure of all the variety of packages out
> there but am generally seeking:
>
> 1.)Can create an .exe or .msi which can install the application at a
> certain location
>
> 2.)Can update a pre-installed version of the application with a new
> version (in some fashion)
>
> 3.)Can check for pre-requisites and either package them or download and
> install them (in some fashion) such as  MSVC++ 2010 Redistributables, etc.
>
> 4.)Can potentially read/write the registry and ask for proper
> permissions to do so

I used NSIS for a long time, mostly because it integrates very nicely 
with CPack. But when I switched this project to qmake, I switched the 
installer to wix, and I'm very happy with this decision. It took quite a 
long time to do the first version of the installer in a way that works, 
can update, integrates nicely with my qmake build etc. But now it's easy 
to modify.

My setup works by creating an installer directory for release builds. I 
copy all the necessary Qt libraries and plugins to this dir on the qmake 
run, use the qmake substitution to create a wix include file with 
version info and a couple of other tricks.

If you are interested in the full recipe of this, I can write a full 
description about it on my blog.

Bo Thorsen,
Director, Viking Software.

-- 
Viking Software
Qt and C++ developers for hire
http://www.vikingsoft.eu