What are the standard options for creating install packages for your software application?

Question

What are the standard options for creating install packages for your software application? I notice that most install packages on windows seem to look the same, which leads me to believe that there is probably one standard/default option for building an installer?

My application is java based. My install "requirements" are pretty standard: kick off third party installations; run command-line scripts; move files around

Also, I would prefer an option that allows me to build an installer for both windows and linux.

Answer 1

If you are ready to pay for license, "InstallAnywhere" is a good solution.

I have used open source ant installer a while ago. If you are good with ANT builds, you can use ant installer; it s cross-platform.

Answer 2

If you were doing only Windows, the standard is MSI. This is Microsoft's own technology for Windows installations, and there are software bits out there to help you build MSI installers. MSI is a Windows-only solution though. If you want to support both Windows and Linux, you're going to need something else.

Give InstallJammer a look. It's free, open source and supports Windows and Linux beautifully.

Answer 3

This has come up before... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1029079/multiplatform-installer

The answer given there sounds like the kind of thing you're looking for. http://izpack.org/

Answer 4

As other posters have mentioned, on Windows MSI is a standard solution. For crossplatform installers there are several options, most of them Java based. My company product, InstallBuilder, is one of the few that creates native, non-Java based installers. I mention this specifically because as your app may be Java based, you want to the installer to have minimal overhead and not have any requirements for bundling or searching for a Java runtime during install time, since that will cause all kind of problems