I have gone through many systems myself, but at this point I have decided to stick with old good Wise Installation System 9 for simple stuff and InstallAware for a new development.

SetupFactory looks good, I just don’t have personal experience with that. Thank you for mentioning it here.

While it certainly works, the number of things that I wanted to do that it couldn’t caused me to look at upgrading it to Developer. The upgrade path for those of us who came to InstallAware through Delphi 2007 pushes you to the Studio version instead, and once you get stung for the ‘floating license’ that allows me to have it installed on more than one machine (think automated builds etc), then for a little company like mine it starts to become a too-significant purchase. I don’t make a lot of installs (I don’t have a lot of different customers), but the installs I do make often have slight kinks or customised tweaks that take them out of ‘run of the mill’ and away from the ‘express’/'lite’ products.

So I rechecked Wise (really, I got quite proficient with Wise over the years) but it’s still quite pricey and it’s also gone down the MSI route now – you have to spend big money to get the old-fashioned standalone exe type compiler too.

I looked at InstallShield again, but really it’s there for the big boys. In a small company, it’s a lot to lay down for a tool that you use for maybe a week or so every year.

I had a look at Innosetup, and came away convinced that although I could probably persuade it to do the things I wanted to do, it just felt like it would require more cajouling and coding from me than the other solutions would. Although I don’t want to have to spend too much on an installer (the ‘studio’ versions cost as much as Delphi itself), I’d rather pay to have a certain level of functionality than have to things from scratch every time.

Then I found a link to SetupFactory, by IndigoRose. I spent a little time over the weekend rebuilding one of my more ‘fiddily’ installs with it and was impressed. The GUI is a little busy (although they seem quite proud of the user interface, so what do I know?) but the product certainly works, and there is an active forum, and signs of ongoing activity. Pressed by an upcoming deadline for a project, I’ve opted to go with SetupFactory this time around and see how I feel about it in another year or so’s time. If I feel it’s holding me back in some way then maybe I’ll accept defeat and pony-up for something like the top of the line Wise, InstallShield or InstallAware products.

Anyway, I’m rambling! Interesting post, thanks. I was under the impression that IA and InstallShield were competitors though – you seem to imply they’re part of the same outfit?

My vote would be for Inno Setup – every time!

When you then look at a GUI that have (had?) next to no natural workflow, it is easy to understand that it wasn’t about IF it would misbehave, just about WHEN.

When you start making backup copies _every_ time you save the project, you get frustrated. 5.x was first, and the later 6.x revisions got better, but I lost count of how many times the install compiler would crash during the build and screw up the install database. One nice feature was that you could fairly easily create multiple configurations and get multiple .exe or .msi files.

The ideal solution would be an Install compiler that allows you to define your installation as easily as InnoSetup, but then has extensive knowledge of how to transform the script and achieve the same in true .msi form.