About Linstall

I make Windows binaries for some of my programs. I have been distributing them as zip files.

I want them to be self-extracting EXEs that may also run additional setup programs. The catch is I want to be able to create them without leaving Linux. There are several free Windows Setup Utilities (Installers and Uninstallers), but all of them support only Windows, and can only be used while in Windows. Though if I had to use one, I'd probably look into the the nullsoft install system or Inno Setup.

It seems both Linux and Windows executables don't mind having extraneous data tacked on the end. So I threw together a program that takes a bzipped tar archive and prepends a header program that automatically extracts it and runs an executable of your choice after extraction.

Linstall works for Linux as well, but is less relevant as all popular Linux distributions have excellent package management systems rendering those annoying install programs obsolete. Furthermore, there's no need to resort to ELF binaries as shell scripts can be used.