I have a small pile of programs that I tend to install on any computer I expect to be working on. I have thought that it would speed things up to build myself an installer program (.msi or something like that) that dumps out an runs all the different installers for me.
Has anyone done this? Can anyone think of a reason this wouldn't work as well as I'm thinking?
I wouldn't bother building an installer, but keep all the programs together (or a list of where to get the latest versions).
Building an installer is likely to take longer than the time you'd save due to the automation, unless you work on a lot of different computers.
You have to question whether it's worth the effort to create this installer. First of all, how often would you run this installer? Surely you're not swapping machines every week. And secondly you would need to keep the tools inside your installer up-to-date. So if a new version of a tool is released you would need to update your installer as well, rather than just downloading the actual tool and install it.
I'm going to have to say it really depends on how you like your computer setup. I think for most people it would probably not be worth the time to go through and dredge through creating and installer and keeping all of the programs you use up to date.
That being said.....if you are particularly anal about how your computer works (I am one of those people), and you know how to create installers pretty quickly it might be a time saver. For me, it takes about 2 days to get everything installed that I use (setting up all the directories, and file paths etc. etc.). Most of the programs I use, I have had to purchase personally and so I don't have access to the most up to date versions. Where I work, we tend to buy computers that, shall we say, aren't the most reliable machines, and I have gone through about 5 in the past 2.5 years. If you are in this situation, it could be beneficial, but if you don't re-install frequently and you don't work with building installers, it probably won't be worth doing.