InstallJammer is a multi-platform GUI installer written in Tcl/Tk and designed to work on Windows, OS X and virtually any flavor of UNIX / Linux. OS X is not currently supported but is slated for later release.
Current release is 1.0.1, July 5th, 2006.
It features:
- A full-featured install builder.
- Installs are packaged in single binary executables for each platform making web distribution easy.
- Features specific to Tcl/Tk software and programs.
- Support for multiple install themes.
- Default install themes that resemble popular, commercial installers.
- A high level of configurability. Install panes can actually be modified right down to the Tcl/Tk code.
- Built-in support for Windows install conventions.
- Automatic creation of an uninstaller.
- Currently supported platforms are Windows and Linux.
Mailing List:
mailto:[email protected]
Downloads are available on SourceForge at:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=148203
Documentation is online at:
http://www.installjammer.com/docs/
[ Location: http://www.installjammer.com/
Author: Damon Courtney ] Kevin Walzer InstallJammer is a very nice tool, with a shallow learning curve. As far as I know, it is unique among open-source install tools in supporting both Windows and Linux.
APN Windows Inspection Tool Set is planning on using InstallJammer. I checked out other open source installers as well - WiX[L1 ], INNO[L2 ] and NSIS[L3 ] (I'm only interested in Windows). WiX was the only other one in serious contention. It is more tightly integrated with Windows (no surprise given it comes from Microsoft) and has a lot of ongoing support and a large user community. I went with InstallJammer because (a) it is much easier to get started with, (b) is Tcl based, and (c) all other things being equal, might as well pick a cross-platform tool. As Kevin said, it is a very nice tool.
APN Some questions/issues with InstallJammer (this is all on Windows): * Comments in italics added by Damon Courtney - New lines in text widgets show up as \n. This is true for the built in defaults as well. This was already discovered and fixed in the next release.
- Text widgets should be set to wrap at word boundaries, not at arbitrary characters. Thank you for pointing this out. I have fixed it for the next release.
- Running an install on a system where it is already installed does not behave like the standard Windows Installer. InstallJammer seems to go ahead and overwrite the existing install. Windows installer or WiX detect that the product is installed already and offer to modify/repair/remove the product. InstallJammer behaves more like traditional installers and less like MSI. That's not to say either approach is correct or wrong, but I just went with stand-alone installers. It's quite easy to add this kind of functionality to any installer project. I will provide some enhancements in the next release to make it easier (specifically a variable that says whether a previous install exists).
- Does InstallJammer take care of upgrades (version checking etc.) ? Yes. InstallJammer logs your install version and marks each file installed with that version for comparison during later installation. You can look at the File Update Method property for a file group to see how to compare files by version instead of by date (which is the default).
- There was mention of a choice of install themes somewhere in the docs. Where is this selection made? I couldn't see any place to pick the install theme. When you create a new project through the New Project Wizard, you can select the install theme you want. As of beta 1, you can choose the Classic Wizard or Modern Wizard theme.
As an aside, where is the code for the install runtime? I could not find it in the InstallJammer directory. I wanted to see if I could fix up some of the above issues. The runtime for an installer is built from its theme and several pieces of the core procs. Mostly, it comes from the theme files + common.tcl + install.tcl. That's the bulk of it anyway.
Summer 2006: "the german linux magazine had an article about installers for linux featuring InstallJammer, and quoted it as 'first of its breed' at least for the open source sector, there seem to be some commercial offerings . . . they mention two commercial alternatives Bitrock installer[L4 ] and Plaasoft installer[L5 ]" The article is in Issue 08/2006 p.126-128.
Category Application | Category Deployment
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