The Qt Installer Framework provides a set of tools and utilities to
create installers once, and deploy them across all the supported desktop
Qt platforms without rewriting the source code. The installers will
have the native look and feel on the platform where they are run: Linux,
Microsoft Windows, and OS X.
The Qt Installer Framework tools generate installers with a set of
pages that guide the users during the installation, update, or
uninstallation process. You provide the installable content and specify
information about it, such as the name of the product and the installer
and the text for the license agreement.
You can customize the installers by adding widgets to the predefined
pages or by adding whole pages to provide users with additional options.
You can create scripts to add operations to the installer.
Choosing Installer Type
You can provide end users with an
offline or
online installer, or both, depending on your use cases.
Both installers install a
maintenance tool
that can later be used to add, update, and remove components. Offline
installers contain all the installable components and do not require
network connections during the installation. Online installers only
install the maintenance tool that then downloads and installs components
from an online repository on a web server. Therefore, the size of an
online installer binary is smaller and its download time is shorter than
that of an offline installer binary. The total time spent downloading
and running an online installer might also be shorter than dowloading
and running an offline installer if the end users do not install all the
available components.
End users can use the maintenance tool to install additional
components from the server after the initial installation, as well as to
receive automatic updates to content as soon as the updates are
published on the server. However, this works for an offline installation
only if you specify a repository address in the offline installer
configuration or if end users specify the repository address themselves
in the maintenance tool settings.
Create an offline installer to enable users to directly download the
installation package on a media for installation on a computer later.
You can also distribute the installation package on a CD-ROM or USB
stick, for example.
Create an online installer to enable users to always install the latest versions of the content binaries.
Make online repositories available to promote updates to end users
who install your product. The easiest way to provide an update is to
recreate the repository and upload it to the web server. For large
repositories, you can update only the changed components.
Providing Content for Installers
You can enable other content providers to add components to the
installer as add-on components. The component providers must set up
repositories that contain the installable components and deliver the URL
that points to the repositories to end users. End users must then
configure the URL in the installer. The add-on components are visible in
the package manager.
