Inno Setup is a free installer for Windows programs. First introduced in 1997, Inno Setup today rivals and even surpasses many commercial installers in feature set and stability.
Key features:
- Support for all versions of Windows in use today: Vista, XP, 2008, 2003, 2000, Me, 98, 95, and NT 4.0. (No service packs are required.)
- Extensive support for installation of 64-bit applications on the 64-bit editions of Windows. Both the x64 and Itanium architectures are supported. (On the Itanium architecture, Service Pack 1 or later is required on Windows Server 2003 to install in 64-bit mode.)
- Supports creation of a single EXE to install your program for easy online distribution. Disk spanning is also supported.
- Standard Windows 2000/XP-style wizard interface.
- Customizable setup types, e.g. Full, Minimal, Custom.
- Complete uninstall capabilities.
- Installation of files: Includes integrated support for "deflate", bzip2, and 7-Zip LZMA file compression. The installer has the ability to compare file version info, replace in-use files, use shared file counting, register DLL/OCX's and type libraries, and install fonts.
- Creation of shortcuts anywhere, including in the Start Menu and on the desktop.
- Creation of registry and .INI entries.
- Integrated Pascal scripting engine.
- Support for multilingual installs.
- Support for passworded and encrypted installs.
- Silent install and uninstall.
- Full source code is available (Borland Delphi 2.0-5.0).
- Windows 8 change: [Icons] section flag excludefromshowinnewinstall now additionally prevents the new shortcut from being automatically pinned the Start screen.
- Added new command line parameters supported by Setup: /HELP and /?. Cause Setup to display the list of accepted command line parameters in a message box, exiting with exit code 0 afterwards. Ignored if the UseSetupLdr [Setup] section directive was set to no.
- Added new command line parameter supported by Inno Setup's own installer: /PORTABLE=1. Causes Inno Setup's own installer to not create an uninstaller nor an entry in the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel applet. Also supported by QuickStart Pack's installer.
- Added workaround for bug in 64-bit Windows which in some cases would cause Windows to display an error message when a user tries to change the icon of an installed shortcut.
- Updated the compiler and document icons, created by Motaz.
- Restart Manager: If Setup is not running silently and is unable to close all applications using files that need to be updated, it will now ask the user to abort, retry, or ignore. Previously it always ignored.
- A message has been added in this version. (View differences in Default.isl)
New message: ErrorCloseApplications.
- Added official Corsican and Nepali translations. The Nepali translation requires Unicode Inno Setup.
- Inno Setup Preprocessor (ISPP) changes:
* Added directive #redim to increase or decrease the dimension of an existing array variable.
* Added function DimOf. Returns the dimension of the specified identifier.
* Pascal Scripting changes:
- Added new function: ExtractTemporaryFiles. This function is like ExtractTemporaryFile but supports wildcards and doesn't ignore directory information.
- When ExtractTemporaryFile or ExtractTemporaryFiles extracts a file, this is now logged.
- Unicode Inno Setup: Now has an Int64 type, supported by IntToStr. Also added new StrToInt64, StrToInt64Def, and GetSpaceOnDisk64 support functions.
- If the Flags parameter of a [Files] entry includes isreadme and the entry also has a BeforeInstall or AfterInstall parameter, the BeforeInstall or AfterInstall functions will now only be called when the file is installed and no longer a second time when the file is viewed after the installation has completed.
- [Setup] section directive VersionInfoProductTextVersion, which sets the textual product version value, is now truncated at 50 characters instead of 20. Contributed by Lukas Ais via GitHub.
- The Inno Setup help file source code has been moved into the main Inno Setup source code repository.
- Fix: [Setup] section directive CloseApplicationsFilter was partially case sensitive.
Unicode [Code] based on RemObjects Pascal Script Git commit 31abd2925837d85a6965b5325e8fb7835ca73ea8.
- QuickStart Pack: No longer offers to download and install InnoIDE (which is no longer maintained by its author) unless /ALLOWINNOIDE=1 is specified on the command line. If you're still using InnoIDE it is recommended you switch to Inno Script Studio (which QuickStart pack can download and install).
- Minor tweaks.
