Quick Deployment Wizard

Author: deepesh (talk, contrib)

Links

Get it from http://www.freeware-alternative.uni.cc/, I will be releasing code soon after proper commenting.

Description

This is a complete GUI NSIS Script based free installer that, in detail, is a software installer and uninstaller for Microsoft© Windows© 95, 98, Me, NT© 4, 2000 and XP applications. Its design goals are to provide Windows-compliant installation and removal functionality with a small distribution size, a straightforward and simple wizard interface, and install and uninstall support using a modern theme. All of that is free with no adware and no spyware. This will also be soon be made open-source.

Main Features

1. it has, approximately, 80-140k overhead over uncompressed data size (after UPX PE compression and bzip compression). Most of the times the installer will be smaller than the size of the original files combined). For example, the original size of an 1.1 Mb installer of QDW is more than 2.5 Mb, having compression of more than 50%.
2. it generates self-contained, win32 executable installers with Auto Register for DLL and OCX files.
3. it has complete uninstallation support.
4. it has support for adding VB projects directly. Most of the entries will be filled automatically, including the OCX used by the project (DLL scan will be added soon).
5. it has a customizable appearance (icons, header images etc.).
6. it has an optional support to include a bitmap splash screen with fading effects (only on Win2000/XP) and sound, which is optional.
7. installers can be as large as 2GB (theorically -- when building on Win9x the limit seems to be around 500MB, however building on NT then installing on Win9x works with larger sizes)
8. it supports adding shortcuts to both Start Menu & Desktop.
9. it can recursively add whole directories to the installer.
10. it is based on NSIS techonology.
11. it is absolutely FREE, with ever increasing functions, version by version. Soon, I will be making the source code available to help in its development.

To Do List

1. installation and uninstalltion of shared DLL's using shared references count method.
2. multilingual support.
3. greater customization.