Inno Setup is an open source script-driven installation system created in Borland Delphi by Jordan Russell. The first version was released in 1997.

History

Since Jordan Russell wasn't satisfied with InstallShield Express which he had received upon purchase of Borland Delphi, he decided to make his own installer. At first, Inno Setup was little known. The first public version was 1.09. The installer was simple but powerful.

To make an installation package with version 1.09, an “ISS.TXT” file needed to be created in the installation directory. In the file, the user needed to supply variables and values which are still used in Inno Setup today. These variables served as the configuration of the installation package but many other features could not be changed. The installation compiler had no editor and was more of a shell to compile scripts.

Throughout Inno Setup's development, it was becoming more widely used. Since Inno Setup was and still is free and open source, many software companies started switching to the open source solution in software installation . Since Inno Setup was based around scripting, fans of Inno Setup started ISTool and ScriptMaker to aid in visual and simpler ways to make installations for Inno Setup.

Inno Setup has won many awards including the Shareware Industry Awards three times in a row - from 2002 to 2004.

Many people have taken Inno Setup source code and used it to develop third-party versions of Inno Setup. An example is My Inno Setup Extensions by Martijn Laan. In June 2003 My Inno Setup Extensions was incorporated into Inno Setup.

Features

Key features

Support for all modern versions of Microsoft Windows – 95, NT 4.0, 98, 2000, ME, XP, Server 2003, XP 64-bit, XP Professional and Vista. (No service packs are required.)

Extensive support for installation of 64-bit applications on the 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Both the x64 and Itanium architectures are supported.

Prior versions supported Windows NT 3.51 (Before v3.0) and Windows 3.X (Before v1.3)

Supports creation of a single EXE to install programs for easy online distribution.

Supports disk spanning.

Customizable setup types, e.g. Full, Minimal, Custom.

Complete uninstall capabilities.

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/OCXs and type libraries, and install fonts.

Creation of shortcuts, 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).

Missing features

Does not support Windows Installer technology.

Does not support Unicode, due to its Delphi 2 roots.

Does not support Modify/Repair type operations.