I recommend looking here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/ "The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. The toolset supports a command line environment that developers may integrate into their build processes to build MSI and MSM setup packages " Theroeticially you could build a simple C++ application that could generate the XML file which includes dependencies between libraries and then create MSM setup packages. Then you could chop and choose what you would like to install. A really good tutorial is here: http://www.tramontana.co.hu/wix/ Taken from the tutorial introduction: ---------- The toolset we are about to introduce, WiX, uses a different approach. Instead of a tool with a graphical interface that allows the developers to collect the files and other related tasks making up the installation process manually, it is much more like a programming language. Integrating perfectly with the usual process of creating applications, it uses a text file (based on the increasingly popular XML format) to describe all the elements of the installation process. The toolset has a compiler and a linker that will create the setup program just like our usual compiler creates our application from the source files. Therefore, WiX can be made part of any automated application build process very easily, be that based either on the classical technology of makefiles or the similar features of contemporary integrated development environments. In addition to this integration, providing basically nothing more but developer comfort, WiX offers another level of integration, far more advantageous than the first one: the integration of the setup development process with that of the application. Traditionally, setup programs were only written when the main application had already been finished; often even by different developers. This approach requires a tedious and error prone process of collecting information about all the resources making up the application. While the files themselves are usually obvious, registry entries, services and most forms of inter-resource dependencies are often hard to reconstruct in a later stage: if solid development documentation is lacking, the setup developers have to collect all pieces of information from the original developers or try to extract it from the source code. In an integrated application/setup development environment, the original developer should modify the WiX source files in sync with the application development. As soon as a new module has been started, a new registry, service or other dependency has been coded, the appropriate setup modification should be made in parallel. Using this approach, no important information will ever be lost and, as a bonus, the setup program will be practically finished together with application itself. ---------- The for a blog with the original developer is here: http://blogs.msdn.com/robmen/default.aspx Peter. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Abrahams" <dave@boost-consulting.com> Newsgroups: gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 12:21 AM Subject: Re: Customer Friendlier Boost Installation
"David Bergman" <davidb@home.se> writes:
Well, to begin with I think we need a Windows installer for headers and vc7.1 binaries. There are some free pro-quality installer construction systems for Windows out there; I forget the names though.
There are a number of valuable possible enhancements I can think of, if you're ambitious:
- Allow users to select which libraries they want and:
a. use bcp to allow users to cut down how much is actually installed, or
b. allow people to cut down how much is actually downloaded (a la cygwin installer)
- Add support for binaries for other compilers, although especially when you add STLPort in as a variable there are just too many libs to build to get complete coverage, so:
- add support for invoking bjam via a GUI. Preferably this GUI would dynamically show the user the bjam command-line it is composing so that the user would gain some familiarity and be able to step outside the bounds of the GUI eventually.
I would like for us to have an installer-generator (for Windows) so we do not have to recreate, or at least rebuild, the installer for every revision of Boost.
Sounds good. Thanks for volunteering!
-- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com
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