Question

Which (commercial or free) installer tool would you recommend to replace InstallAnywhere as the installer for a Java EE application? What do you specifically like about it, and what are its downsides?

Some requirements:

• Must support running custom Java code as part of installation procedure
• Must support Windows, including latest 64-bit versions like Windows Server 2008; support for other target operating systems is a plus
• Must be able to install a bundled application server (such as Resin or Tomcat) as a service on Windows
• Must support basic stuff like copying and moving files around, editing configuration files, extracting ZIPs, etc.
• (Must support bundling a specific version of JRE; at the very least by including a ZIP to be extracted)

Edit: a few more points:

• Preferably does not depend on a preinstalled JRE (or any other 3rd party runtime environment or library) on target machine; in other words, can produce an independent Windows .exe (or .msi)
• The tool should preferably be cross-platform so that installer development can be done on Linux, Windows, or Mac.
• Should preferably have a decent GUI for putting the installer together. Once that is done, however, it must be possible to skip the GUI and make installer building part of automated build process.

Answer 1

In this case, unfortunately, SO didn’t tell us much that we didn’t know already (and indeed the tool we ultimately chose was not mentioned in any answer). However, I’m posting our experiences here, as they might be helpful to others later on.

We (quickly) evaluated the following installer tools, mostly by looking at their websites and browsing for other information on the web: Actual Installer, Advanced Installer, BitRock InstallBuilder, Inno Setup, Install Creator, Installer VISE for Windows, InstallShield, install4j, IzPack, NSIS, openInstaller, Scriptlogic MSI Studio, Smart Install Maker, Symantec Wise Installation Studio, and WiX.

We screened out most of them early on, and ended up shortlisting two options for closer evaluation: BitRock InstallBuilder and install4j. For these tools, we downloaded evaluation versions and did some prototyping, to see if the things that are most important to us are really supported, and how easy or hard it is to get things working.

Both of the options were good in many things (and both seemed good alternatives to InstallAnywhere):

• They produce completely native and pretty Windows .exe installers that are easy to customise with your own graphics etc.
• Both tools could easily be automated so that installer building is triggered from Ant. (With install4j it literally took me just five minutes to learn it and then implement it.)
• Both companies seem to have good support (well, at least for prospects evaluating their products 😉 Especially from BitRock we got very quick replies.

In the following things install4j seemed better than BitRock for our needs (many of these are subjective, of course, so YMMV):

• install4j definitely has better support for running custom Java code – it can be done at any point during the installation, and regardless of whether there’s any preinstalled JRE on the system.
• BitRock uses a more hard-coded sequence of installation steps while install4j is more flexible. In install4j, adding custom screens and forms (with or without custom Java code), asking user for input, etc., can be done at any point, before or after installing any files.
• Also some basic things like defining the filesets that are to be copied to the target system, and adding an installation step to replace certain strings in configuration files seemed somewhat easier in install4j.
• install4j has better support for JRE bundling
• When creating installers on Linux, the look & feel of install4j IDE was nicer (more ‘native’) than that of BitRock
• (install4j’s licensing options were better for us – we strongly preferred a couple of floating licenses to named licenses for all developers or an expensive ‘site license’)

So ultimately we went with install4j. Here are some more details on why it was impressive:

• Its IDE, where you put the installer together, is very simple and easy to use – I could figure out how to do most things I wanted quickly, even without looking at documentation. And when I did have to check something in the documentation (e.g. how to refer to installer variables; how to get started writing custom Java code against the install4j API), it didn’t take long to find what I needed.
• You can completely customise the screens and actions during the installation procedure, and also add custom screens and actions (coded against their Java API) at any point. This was important to us because we need to reuse existing custom Java code from the old InstallAnywhere installer.
• In some small details, install4j seems ideal for Java developers. For example, if you want to add a validation script to check some user input, you can code that very quickly in the install4j IDE itself, using plain old Java, with coding assistance resembling that of IntelliJ IDEA.
• We deemed the cost of install4j floating licenses reasonable, considering how good the tool is (and downright bargain compared to the inflated pricing of InstallAnywhere…)
• In short, it seemed like the best installer tool available for deploying Java applications.