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Your rating: Now say why...
InstallBuilder allows you to create easy-to-use installers for Mac OS X, Linux (x86/PPC), Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD, and Windows applications. The generated installer for an application has native look and feel and no external dependencies. BitRock installers can be run in GUI, text, and unattended modes. It has free, fully functional licenses for open source projects.
What's New
Version 8.2.0:
- New feature: Password protected encryption of installer payload.
- Added support for ksh shell in environment variable actions.
- Improved
action to allow configuring the bitness (32bit/64bit) of the target Java runtime. - Improved
action to support wildcards. - Improved installer images initialization on Mac OS X.
- Improved ini file actions to support both hashes and semicolons as comment characters.
- Fixed OS X installers prompting twice for privilege elevation when enabling
. - Fixed 32 bit installers crashing in Linux Mint x64 when running in gtk mode.
- Fixed system language not being properly detected in some Unix environments.
- Fixed GUI build log not allowing text selection on Mac OS X.
- Fixed unattended modeui setting not properly displaying its default value in the help menu.
- Fixed
failing at uninstallation time in some environments. - Fixed required parameters being mandatory even if its parent parameter is not selected.
- Fixed nested uninstaller calls not properly working on Windows.
- Improved
Version 8.2.0:
- New feature: Password protected encryption of installer payload.
- Added support for ksh shell in environment variable actions.
- Improved
action to allow configuring the bitness (32bit/64bit) of the target Java runtime. - Improved
action to support wildcards. - Improved installer images initialization on Mac OS X.
- Improved ini file actions to more...
- Improved
Requirements
- PPC / Intel
- Mac OS X 10.2 or later
InstallBuilder User Discussion (Write a Review)
Overall:
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(4)
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InstallBuilder allows you to create easy-to-use installers for Mac OS X, Linux (x86/PPC), Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD, and Windows applications. The generated installer for an application has native look and feel and no external dependencies. BitRock installers can be run in GUI, text, and unattended modes. It has free, fully functional licenses for open source projects.
Copyright © 2012 MacUpdate LLC
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Stephen_Fry reviewed on 10 Nov 2011
But I guess for Windows this can be a handy app for devs.
Said that, this app is way to expensive. I mean, there are dozens of free tools to do the same (Xcode has one for assembling pkg files)
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Coincidence?
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John Walker reviewed on 09 Sep 2010
The installation time might be long enough to pop a small bag of popcorn, but it's worth the wait and you only have to do it once. It's actually pretty fast after that.
Opening it, I find that there are many features in this tool that are typical among installers that are necessary (ReadMe, License, etc.). There are also things like an uninstaller which many other programs that create installers never include. The average user can be frustrated removing something that does not have an uninstaller by means of traditional drag-and-drop to the trash/recycle bin, so it's great to include one in your install. Some installers provide optional splash screens, this one does, too. It has everything you will need.
You might not only get this for the features, but you might also get it for the compatibility of the installs. The compatibility is impressive. It's not just Mac and Windows, but many other operating systems. It's great that this supports some of the less popular operating systems just as much as the popular operating systems. I haven't seen many other programs with such large compatibility.
The reason why I don't want to buy this is because I will never need it, but, if you need the compatibility and/or features, this product is worth its cost. Try it and see what I mean.
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Paul Whitcomb reviewed on 08 Aug 2010
There are many features that I thought were incredible useful like an HTML License file. It's typical for most installers to have a readme and license. I looked at "Customization" and saw that it had support for many operating systems that I've never even heard of. There's octal file permissions for windows which is useful at times when you want to make something read-only or not. Another feature that I liked a lot was the Splash Image feature. I don't know why you'd need this but it's good to have one.
The most useful feature was the Uninstaller so you could include an uninstaller in an installation.
If I had the money for such an advanced application, I would buy it. You shouldn't deny this application because of its price.
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Idk reviewed on 08 Aug 2010
Besides, installers are annoying and are usually not needed unless you're installing system files.
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"There are free tools to make installers for Mac OS X like Apple's Package Maker. There are also free tools to make Linux installers. There are also free tools to make Windows installers. Who would pay almost $800 when they can get something else that does the same thing for free?"
For example, somebody who does not want to learn how to create 3 separate installers with 3 different tools, who wants to create all installation packages from a single build machine and who wants support (we strive to provide excellent support to our customers). When you are running a business (and InstallBuilder is targeted at commercial software developers, though we have free licenses for open source projects) one important aspect to consider is how much time a particular tool is going to save you vs. how much it costs. In general, if you need to target more than one platform, InstallBuilder should pay for itself in the time savings alone.
"Besides, installers are annoying and are usually not needed unless you're installing system files. "
If you are installing a simple desktop app, no installer is necessary, just package the .app in a DMG and prompt the user to drag and drop in the Applications folder. However, InstallBuilder is targeted more towards users that require complex installation procedures, in which they need to check pre-requisites, ask the users questions during installation and validate the answers, and so on.
At the end of the day, the best choice depends on how many platforms you need to target, whether you are already familiar with other installation tools, how complex is your installation requirements and so on. For example of what our installers look like, check out http://bitnami.org For a sample of our customers, check out http://installbuilder.bitrock.com/customers.html
Daniel Lopez (InstallBuilder Developer)
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If, for some crazy reason, you absolutely can not get around the need for an installer, then grab Apple's Xcode, instal it, and go to /Developer/Applications/Utilities/PackageMaker.app
You can add scripts to your instal and all that niftiness, and do it using the native installer package format that users expect and trust.
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So, this application is just plain useless.
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http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/sugarinstaller/
It installs MySQL, Apache and PHP and configures it on the fly. To do this, it needs to check for potential port conflicts, ask the user for the appropriate passwords, etc.
Cheers
Daniel
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