sreedhar_kumar
21st March 2005 05:45 UTC
NSIS vs IzPack
Hi All,
I have been working on NSIS for the past one week and found it very useful. Writing PHP sort of code for every page u want for Installer is also nice but time-consuming.
I did not find much help from "Windows Help File" supplied with NSIS regarding "Creating Custom Pages". Help File need to be elaborated more and the Examples too.
By the way, I am thinking of shifting from NSIS to IzPack. if somebody has earlier worked on IzPack, tell me which it cant do....
Note: All I want is to install Tables on a Remote Oracle. i.e. I need to run SQL Files on Remote Computer(may be using Telnet or may be using someother simple technique).
Bye
-Sreedhar
fredtheman
21st March 2005 10:26 UTC
Re: NSIS vs IzPack
Originally posted by sreedhar_kumar
By the way, I am thinking of shifting from NSIS to IzPack. if somebody has earlier worked on IzPack, tell me which it cant do....[/B]
"IzPack is an installers generator for the Java platform. It produces lightweight installers that can be run on any operating system where a Java virtual machine is available."
Talk about light-weight :-)
Fred.
sreedhar_kumar
21st March 2005 12:24 UTC
Oh yes, "light weight"...
Even NSIS is "light weight". it has a foot print of just 32KB.
I think, the main difference is NSIS uses "PHP-like language" whereas IzPack uses "ANT-like Scripts" i.e. XML Files.
Comm@nder21
21st March 2005 18:05 UTC
PHP-like language
LOL???
i'd call it rather batch-like or asm-like.
it has nothing to do with php (except the var-symbol $).
saivert
24th March 2005 01:47 UTC
The NSIS script language is inspired from a lot of other script/batch languages. You can't just say it draws it's structures from one other particular design.
I like NSIS because it's so generic in it's form. You can do just about anything if you use your imagination.
The plugin architecture is great but not unique to NSIS.
InstallShield always had support for plugins to be used in extending the installer with new pages and setup routines.
The most typical plugin used within InstallShield installers is a CD-Key/Product key verification plugin.
InstallShield also had support for device driver installation at a very early stage something NSIS is lacking support for. You can make an NSIS installer which installs a device driver by making it execute a .INF file but that again uses Windows INF script engine to to the work (i'm not sure what it's really called).
If you're going to run SQL queries you may write a plugin tailored for that task but that again requires the knowledge of languages like C, C++ and/or Delphi.