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Web installation software

Web installers are becoming more and more popular every day - you download only a small part of the installation and extract the remaining files from the web server.

But with all its popularity, I could not find a single installer that initially supports web installation.

I have been using Inno Setup for several years now, but the download support is very simple, you need to do everything manually. NSIS is also quite limited when it comes to downloading and installing files from the Internet.

Is there any installer that supports full-featured web installations?

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3 answers

InstallShield has extensive support for web installations.

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Windows Installer supports web installations:

  • you run msiexec.exe with the package url instead of the file path.
  • MSI boots (MSI only)
  • when starting the installation, Windows Installer downloads only those CABs that it needs from the same place as MSI

There are some optimizations for this:

  • create a CAB for each function instead of one CAB for the entire installer
  • leave the cab out of your msi
  • put MSI and CAB in the same folder on your server.

In addition, you can always add an EXE loader to handle the package prerequisites as well.

Most commercial installation tools have direct support for this. Some free tools also support this, but for most you need to configure it manually.

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You can create a network installer with NSIS using the inetc plugin

!define URL "http://url to full installer.exe" outfile netinstall.exe name "Net Install" setcompressor zlib !include "mui2.nsh" !include "logiclib.nsh" !insertmacro MUI_PAGE_WELCOME !insertmacro MUI_PAGE_INSTFILES !insertmacro MUI_LANGUAGE "English" LangString TEXT_DOWNLOAD_FAILED ${LANG_ENGLISH} "Unable to download installer.$\r$\n$\r$\nPlease check you Internet connection and retry." section NetInstall download: inetc::get "${URL}" $PLUGINSDIR\installer.exe pop $0 ${if} $0 == "Cancelled" quit ${elseif} $0 != "OK" messagebox MB_RETRYCANCEL|MB_ICONEXCLAMATION "$(TEXT_DOWNLOAD_FAILED)" IDRETRY download quit ${endif} hidewindow execwait '"$PLUGINSDIR\installer.exe"' sectionend
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