InstallShield -- my experience

Olivier> RMS says that he needs the details of what InstallShield Olivier> does to state about the legality of its use. Since I've Olivier> never touched this thing, could someone who did answer the Olivier> question ? I will forward the information to him. I've used InstallShield 5.0 (free version) (that's "free" as in "free beer"). There are two parts to setting up an InstallShield installation: 1. Point and click definition of components and installation directories. This produces control files for the InstallShield program. 2. Coding the "wizard." For simple installations, this can be skipped; but for writing things to the Registry, and to prepare an uninstallation script, this must be done. The InstallShield language is similar to Visual Basic, but less powerful. After the installation is set up, you must `build' it into a compiled form. You wind up with: a. A set of stock files: generic dialog boxes, the InstallShield language interpreter, etc. These are available only in binary form both to the InstallShield developer and to the end-user. b. Some compiled representation of your installation script and its data files, in an InstallShield-readable way. c. Some cabinet (.CAB) files containing the application to be installed. I believe that the payload (the application to be installed) is separate from the InstallShield apparatus. This is borne out by the several tools which exist to read the contents of .CAB files: EXTRACT.EXE, which is shipped with Windows 95; a graphical .CAB viewing tool which is available at no charge from the Microsoft web site. Consider the analogy with compress(1): the method of creating a compressed file is not free; but the file format is known, and decompression tools are free. In this case, both the method of creating the file and the extraction tools are non-free, and I am not aware if the format is freely available. Some documentation from Microsoft's web pages: "The .cab format used for downloading Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 components from the Internet is a non-proprietary format based on Lempel-Ziv compression." [1] At any rate, the .CAB format is the standard distribution format for 32-bit Windows; EXTRACT.EXE is a system utility which is licensed to all registered users of Win95 (it's on the Win95 CD, even if not installed by default). It should be possible to define the setup so that it looks something like this, when burned on CD-ROM: /SETUP32.EXE /(installshield data files) /(.CAB files) /XEmacs/ /XEmacs/src/ /XEmacs/lisp/ ... other XEmacs sources /InstallShield/(script and data files) This would accomplish several things: First, the full XEmacs sources would be distributed, as required; and the user would then have the option to run in-place (from the CD-ROM). (It's customary to create an installation option for this, when possible.) Second, the full sources of the InstallShield script would be distributed, as (possibly) required. Of course, one would need InstallShield to make use of these sources, but that doesn't prevent the *script* from being distributed. Finally, a script (.BAT file, likely) could be included which installs XEmacs from /XEmacs/ tree on the CD. This would provide an easy way to install, completely sidestepping the .CAB issue. Footnotes: [1] http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ieak/cab.htm -- Sam Mikes smikes(a)alumni.hmc.edu