Which brings me to my next agenda point... Installers.
Now, InstallShield CAN be used in an automated build. Of this I am reassured...
I opened up InstallShield for the first time today, and my eyes BLED.
Wow.
So, I figured I had two options - 1- stick with InstallShield, deal with it, be a man.
or 2- move to inno setup.
In case you've never seen Inno Setup, it's amazing. It's hard to get excited about installers, to be honest, but Inno Setup is CLASS. That's the installer that makes installers that look like windows installers. ;)
And it's free!
So... our needs in the installer are pretty weird... no application to install... but installing four different sets of files, to four customizable locations... InstallShield does handle it very well... View: Old Installer:
This certainly does the job. But I don't want to use it because InstallShield is ugly confusing expensive and the sort of thing that makes me want to cry, since it is based around a database that they're quite happy for you to edit by hand and the files are binary and aaaaagh.
So Inno Setup uses scripts, and you can write bits of pascal, and customize it to hell, and basically anything remotely complicated you might want to do, they've already thought of, and given you a function call for.
This afternoon's work:
What do you think? Is it ok?
Dave.
13 comments:
looks ok to me :) Does it pick up on the VSTPATH from the registry??
graf.
Of course :)
Please be sure to allow installation of individual plugins in your new installer. I found it strange that Sonalksis had created a huge plugin bundle where one must install all plugins. Maybe even individual installers again would be way more practical and confirm to what we are used to.
Great to see Sonalksis is alive and kicking and that an experienced individual like yourself has joined the team !
Yeah. I agree...
I'm even hovering over the idea of separating the installers for the different formats, although I guess you currently have the choice of which to install... and they're not enormous to download (when they're compressed together the additional formats don't increase the size much, because they share so much data - most of the size of the plugin is the resource data for the UI graphics).
One reason why it's been a large installer is that it allows you to try the other plugins beside the one you've purchased.
We're having a big internal debate on what format serves people best.
Your vote is for either one big installer with options, or individual installers, right?
Anyone else have any thoughts?
hey dave, thanks for reposnding. Yes the two options you have mentioned would definitely be great.
To be completely honest with you, I much prefer separate installers. Say for instance, I bought the EQ plugin only, why should I have to download 3 (soon to be 4) additional plugins to install. Unless we see these plugins sold only as a bundle (like Waves), I don't think it is a good idea to combine installers.
Keep in mind that nothing will stop people from trying the other Sonalksis plugins if they wish to. Maybe a good idea would be to have separate installers but to post them all on a single download page so that users may easily see and be tempted to try the others.
An option to not install particular plugins in the BIG installer option would be a minimum requirement in my opinion.
I have always wanted to buy Sonalksis plugins, however, the things that stopped me were...
- I didn't like the new installer
- The price is a little too high (compared to competitors like Voxengo, Kjaerhus which are of a very similar quality to Sonalksis)
- I dislike the GUIs of the compressor and EQ, too bright and hard to read values.
- There is no way to type a value in for a parameter. I am constantly surprised by plugins which don't allow this ... this should definitely be a standard for useability. Say i want 3.4 db, why should I have to move a knob slowly to ensure I get it when I can type it in.
- I had noticed some stange behaviour in the compressor which I had mentioned to developers at Sonalksis with Mode II.
- When I open the plugins (this also apparently happens when registered), I must put up with a nag screen. Why is this ? I'm still confused by it. I thought the nag screen was only part of the demo, but I was told otherwise by Sonalksis support. Usually people pay to get rid of this (e.g. WinRAR, FlashFXP, Winzip .etc)
These are just some ideas, I am a very big fan of Sonalksis products and am constantly keen to see what happens with their development as I am still very keen on buying (at least) the Compressor.
Cheers
Fots
p.s. i think that combining formats in one installer is completely fine. As long as one has the option to not install a particular format. This is the standard I have seen in all plugins, going with separate installers for formats seems a tad extreme :D
Fots
Hey fots,
I'm gonna do a string of installers, one for each, and one for each bundle. If a decision is made not to release the individual installers, then I'll be sorry, but I'll absolutely ensure there's an option to only install the plugs you want.
I can tell you that basically everything on your "don't like" list that's under my control (i.e. not price!) I'll be working on. I'm not offering predicted dates though ;) I need you to email me about the "mode2 compressor" weirdness. I'm not aware of this. I'm dave at sonalksis dot com.
Cheers!
hey mate, I had sent an email to sonalksis support some time ago about it but I'm afraid I no longer have this chain of emails to forward to you, I'll try to reproduce it again and resend.
We had sent around 10 - 11 emails between us and I had provided a significant amount of detail including audio examples.
I'll see if I can prepare this stuff again mate, if you can, maybe just ask the guys if they are aware of this chain of emails, I'm hpoing they might still have the info :D
Fots
Hey fots.
I have asked the guys and they're going to take a look, but in the meantime, anything you can find would be great.
If nothing else, drop me an email, so I can keep you updated :)
All the best.
yo dave, you can hand build MSI's using the SDK or tray advancedinstaller.
PS the latest version (12) of installshield claims to use XML instead of their proprietary binary format so you could try that. But basically its a rip-off ;-)
Hmm... advancedinstaller looks interesting, but the free one doesn't look like I can do weird hacky stuff, like give the user a set of tickboxes and customizable install paths and work the rest out. Inno Setup has a small pascal compiler built in, which makes that sort of thing easy... and it's totally free and command-line driveable ;)
I'm not totally annoyed with it generating .exes rather than .msis... in fact, it doesn't bother me at all, so i guess I'm quite content with Inno... cheers for the tipoff tho ;)
Hi Dave, just thought I would post the comments we discussed earlier on here.
Personally I think it is very important to think of a standard, expandable directory structure for all your plugins along with sensible groups and icons in the start menu. This may be some people’s first impression of your software and has to be good.
You could have sub directories in your Program Files dir that relate to the product. Within those subdirectories you could have docs and DirectX and whatever else you feel you need. Then standard file names for pdfs etc. For example:
C:\Program Files\Sonalksis\TBK12\docs\Install.pdf
C:\Program Files\Sonalksis\TBK12\docs\User Manual.pdf
C:\Program Files\Sonalksis\TBK12\docs\Uninstall.pdf
C:\Program Files\Sonalksis\TBK12\directx\
etc.
We also mentioned the Nullsoft installer (NSIS http://nsis.sourceforge.net/). This is a fully scriptable installer so it might be worth playing with. I am not sure if this will meet your business needs as it is on the list of things I should play with.
Let me know what you think.
Charlie
Good call on the dir structure, Charlie.
I'm bound to some extent by what the old installers did, but for new stuff (and for current stuff as far as possible), i'll structure the folders properly. Much better to have things neat and tidy, and it's not exactly hard work to do! ;)
NSIS looks cool... very cool actually, and it looks like it can take on inno... I'll be adding stuff to the inno scripts, and if i hit walls i may consider dragging nsis in ;)
Dave.
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