[Lazarus] Installer recommendations

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Henry Vermaak wrote:
> On 31 July 2011 17:18, David M. Lawrence <dave at fuzzo.com> wrote:
>> Back in the ancient days when I got Delphi, it was bundled with a version of
>> InstallShield.  Can ya'll recommend any decent -- preferably free --
>> replacements?  If you like the Windows installer system, can anyone point me
>> to a decent tutorial explaining how to use it?
> 
> I can strongly recommend the Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset:
> 
> http://wix.sourceforge.net/
> 
> It's an interface to the Windows Installer where you define all the
> specifics of your project in an XML file.  It the compiles and links
> into an msi file.  Documentation and tutorials are good.  I've
> switched some of our products over to it and we haven't looked back.
> It even does automatic driver installs.

I wonder if I could phrase the OP's question in a slightly different way.

Allowing that Linux and other unix-style OSes have package formats of 
various kinds, and allowing that an MSI file is just another 
implementation of the same sort of thing, is there a "meta installer" 
that can at the very least be used to build dependency lists etc.?

Debian and derivatives have a utility called  alien  that can be used to 
convert between package formats, but it seems to me to be unfortunate if 
a programmer has to go through a sequence of stages to build a package 
for Debian, another for Ubuntu which might have different locations or 
symlinks for e.g. database libraries, another for Fedora and then 
finally something similar for Windows.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]