Inno Setup


Inno Setup is a free software script-driven installation system created in 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. The first public version was 1.09.
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.
Inno Setup grew popular due to being free and open source; free for both commercial and non-commercial use, many software companies switched to the tool. 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, which was incorporated into Inno Setup in June 2003.

Features

Key features