Installation Programs

Programs tend not to be single files. They may have images, configuration files and many other extra elements to them. In order for programs to provide certain functionality they may need to update operating system configuration files. This could be as simple as adding a icon on the desktop to registering a new hardware driver.

Installation is the process of putting your program onto a users machine. This commonly requires

• Copying or extracting of files to the installation directory
• Creating configuration files
• Registering with window managers
• Registering with other elements of the OS
• Removing temporary files

All of these tasks could be done manually by the user. However if a mistake is made then the user may not be able to get the software working. As such scripts or programs to automate this process are common.

The linux operating system uses scripts to automate this process. This will either be through Makefiles or the package manager. Windows uses specially created programs called installers. These tend to be generated by specialist programs such as install shield