Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Qt Framework Installer to the rescue

For those of you developing and distributing desktop applications that target multiple platforms (i.e. Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) and struggling to have a common installer tool for such platforms, you may want to consider the Qt Framework Installer, the same installer Qt itself uses.

Developed by Nokia some time ago and now continued by Digia, it latest stable release is 1.3.0. We have been using it every time we installed the Qt SDK (since the Nokia times) or just recently with the Qt 5.x downloads available from Digia.

The good thing about this installer framework is the ability to create installers for all the desktop platforms supported by Qt, along with providing such installers with the native look and feel of Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
The configuration files are XML and you can define the set of pages and the flow the user will be presented with. It also allows to create offline or online installers, the later with the capability to check a remote repository to download content to be installed.
I think this framework is worth to get a look at, even if you have everything already set for any particular good installer so far, let's say the venerable NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) for the Windows family.

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