Installers: what are they and what do they do?
Posted on January 3, 2008 | Filed Under Computers & Software
Not many applications can work right after you copy them onto your hard drive. The majority require you to make an installation by means of a software installer.
When you get some program, it is usually shipped in an achieved distributive form.
Programmers who want to save time or customer support service costs you can choose to use an open source or commercial install maker.
Microsoft has developed the Windows Installer for its Windows platform that helps developers making install with ease.
There are a lot of other commercial installation software solutions you can find for Windows XP: InstallShield, Smart Install Maker and several others.
The majority of such programs make packages that offer a consistent experience for users installing different applications.
Not happy with commercial install creator software? Those who prefer open source applications might have a look at Innosetup and some more solutions that can be obtained freely.
A lot of developers choose to make their products work on different systems.
Making installation packages for various systems often requires quite a bit of effort on the part of developers.
If each installation creator for each platform be it Linux, Windows XP, Mac OS or a different system was created separately, it would require additional workload,i.e. extra time in production and testing to assure a satisfactory experience to users.
Fortunately, there are also cross-platform installation software solutions.
For example, InstallAnywhere that is a commercial installation creator, or an open source Java install maker for various platforms named IzPack.
What has been installed one time, may have to be removed some time later.
Some years ago many programs could not be uninstalled properly without the help of dedicated 3rd-party solutions.
Third-party uninstallers are seldom used this way now, because they are often less efficient than standard uninstallers.
In spite of everything such third party uninstallers are used these days.
Many solutions have functionalities that are not erased by the standard uninstall program.
Another difficulty that such programs can assist with is erasing Trojan and spyware.
Such a program does not erase itself voluntarily, so some assistance from a dedicated uninstaller might be needed.
Uninstallers sometimes have some extra abilities such as handing cache memory and managing temporary files, etc.