PortableApps.com Installer 0.13.3 (2009-04-23) (OUTDATED)

The current PortableApps.com Installer is located here:
http://portableapps.com/apps/development/portableapps.com_installer

The PortableApps.com Installer allows you to easily create a custom installer for any app without having to write any code. You just need to edit a simple configuration file that has comments within and have the latest NSIS and the FindProc and MoreInfo plugins installed on your PC.

The current version of the installer is 0.13.3 and it was released on 2009-04-23. You can download the current installer as well as the localization files from here:

Download PortableApps.com Installer 0.13.3 [61K download / 151 unzipped]
MD5: f16b011d6ce3550be9ff26ad7b13d67e

The download includes the following files:
PortableApps.comInstaller.bmp - the banner that is shown on the left-hand side
PortableApps.comInstaller.nsi - the actual code (this file may not be edited)
PortableApps.comInstallerConfig-Example.nsh - an example configuration file which should be edited as the included comment guidelines indicate (no custom code may be added to this file) and renamed to PortableApps.comInstallerConfig.nsh for actual use
PortableApps.comInstallerLANG_*.nsh - localization files for different languages

As you read through PortableApps.comInstallerConfig.nsh, you'll see that you have many options in terms of files to remove and keep. For most installers, removing the App and Other directories is sufficient when upgrading.

For applications with plugins and other files that may reside in the App directory that you wish to keep, you can define individual directories and files to preserve. This will allow you to keep, for example, the App\Example\plugins directory even though you've set the App directory to be removed.

The end result is that your installer is greatly simplified and it removes the need for most developers to have to do a WinMerge on the previous and new version, determine what files and directories to remove and then write the NSIS code to do so.

In the off chance you do need custom code, you can still set the config file to allow it and then include your custom code within a file called PortableApps.comInstallerCustom.nsh. In there, you can define macros that will be run pre install, post install and pre install when the optional section of a multi installer is not selected. These macros must be named CustomCodeOptionalCleanup, CustomCodePreInstall and CustomCodePostInstall. All are optional.

Using The Installer

1. Unzip the files to your application's Other\Source directory in a standard PortableApps.com Format layout
2. Edit the PortableApps.comInstallerConfig.nsh file appropriately for your application
3. Then include the LANG files that you are using in the installer. One if single language, as needed if multiple languages.
4. When done, compile the installer by right-clicking on the PortableApps.comInstaller.nsi file in Windows Explorer and selecting Compile NSIS Script (requires NSIS and the FindProc and MoreInfo plugins installed on your PC)
5. When complete, the directory above your AppNamePortable directory (usually X:\PortableApps) will contain your installer

NOTE: You can usually speed up compile time by doing the above off a fast hard drive (internal or external) rather than a slower flash drive.

Updating the Installer and Config

All releases with the same point number use the same config file layout. So, your config file from PortableApps.com Installer 0.12.1 will work fine, unchanged with 0.12.3. We only make changes on point releases and major releases. 0.13 would have a different config file layout.

NOTE that you CAN use the 0.12.x config file with the 0.13 release. The 0.12 config file is only missing the option to include the PortableApps.com Installer source with your installation.

Language Support

The PortableApps.com Installer has full support for: Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Serbian (Latin), Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Spanish (International), Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Ukranian

The PortableApps.com Installer has partial support (Welcome and Finish pages and a few strings will be in English) for: Belarusian, Bosnian, Breton, Galician, Icelandic, Irish, Kurdish, Luxembourgish, Malay, Mongolian, Norwegian Nynorsk, Serbian, Turkish, Uzbeck, Welsh

If you'd like to assist with one of these languages we're missing our translation for, you can do so in the Localization: PortableApps.com Installer 0.12.x & up forum thread.

New Release Notification

If you'd like to get an email notification when a new version of the PortableApps.com Installer is released, you can just by using your SourceForge.net account and monitoring the PortableApps.com Installer package.

Please post any comments or suggestions.

Thanks,
John

Future additions:

• Add installer generator from appinfo.ini
• Add detection for components when running automated

Release History:

• 0.13.3 (2009-04-23): Fixed bug where source files and config files would extract to wrong path
• 0.13.2 (2009-04-22): Version issue in 0.13.1 fixed
• 0.13.1 (2009-04-22): Fixed a regression affecting needed permssions on Vista
• 0.13.0 (2009-04-22): Automatically starts install when launched from menu or from pa.c updater when alongside platform. /AUTOCLOSE switch for when used from updater so installer is mostly automated. Locale files now in separate directory. Config file now named example so current config isn't accidentally overwritten. Including the installer source in your package is now optional and off by default. Thumbs.db files are now automatically excluded so you don't need to worry about removing them or turning off the feature in Windows.
• 0.12.4 (2009-03-12): Fix for installer hang when refreshing the menu with Platform 1.5
• 0.12.3 (2009-03-02): Fixed Catalan, Serbian, Swedish, Uzbek, Spanish International translations
• 0.12.2 (2009-02-27): Added afrikaans, albanian, arabic, basque, bulgarian, catalan, croatian, czech, danish, farsi, finnish, greek, hebrew, indonesian, korean, latvian, lithuanian, macedonian, norwegian, romanian, serbianlatin, slovak, slovenian, swedish, thai and ukranian translations
• 0.12.1 (2009-02-23): Fixed a translation (not used in any apps)
• 0.12.0 (2009-02-20): Fixed Polish, added Hungarian, updated to new versioning format
• 0.11.2 (2009-02-15): Added ability to pre-select optional component when doing a non-English install (useful for multilingual installers) and updated trademarks
• 0.11.1 (2009-02-02): Fixed typo in "ukranian" includes
• 0.11.0 (2009-01-20): Multilingual and single-language installers now supported. Considered a pre-release.
• 0.10.5 (2009-01-07): VersionCompare support in custom code. removed silent install (was mistakenly enabled previously, causes bugs and bypasses space checks, option checks, etc)
• 0.10.4 (2008-00-00): Blank suffixes now supported
• 0.10.3 (2008-00-00): Plugin installers now have special naming
• 0.10.2 (2008-00-00): Fixed plugin mode bug that required files in root
• 0.10.1 (2008-00-00): Fixed custom code issue
• 0.10.0 (2008-08-05): Initial public release