Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: [Ethereal-dev] Win32: Whole redesign of the NSIS installer, please review and comment

[Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>]

Hi List!

I've just checked in an almost complete redesign of the Win32 NSIS 
installer.

Things changed (hopefully didn't forgot anything):

Installer:
- Installer now includes and installs WinPcap 3.0 (with detection, see 
below)
- Install Sections are grouped now
- New Separate page to select additional tasks like: icons, file 
extensions ...
- New Separate page for WinPcap detection/installation
- Start WinPcap "NPF" service doesn't require a reboot

Uninstaller:
- New Uninstall sections page (uninstall, settings, plugins, WinPcap)
- If uninstallation selected, plugins will now be completely uninstalled 
(all versions, not only the current one)
- If selected, uninstallation of WinPcap


WinPcap installer:
I found it strange for quite a while that Ethereal didn't include the 
WinPcap installer. I've added the currently released 3.0 installer, 
which will be copied into the Program Files dir and called from there if 
the "WinPcap installation" check box is selected.

The installer tries to detect if and which WinPcap version is currently 
installed. It uses the uninstall registry key to do this, which might 
fail for prehistoric versions prior to 2.3.

The installer screen will select installation by default if a 2.x 
version was detected or WinPcap wasn't detected at all.
If anything other than a 2.x version was detected (e.g. 3.x), 
installation will not be selected.

In either case, the user can overwrite this default value at will, e.g. 
keeping an old 2.x version or overwriting a newer 3.x one.

If installation was selected (by user or by default) a previously 
existing WinPcap version will be uninstalled first by calling the 
uninstall program.


Conclusion:
I've done extensive testing and things should be bullet proof, however 
there are too many possibilities in the world...

I've tried to provide usable defaults for all the settings in the 
installer/uninstaller. As a general guide it should install usable 
defaults and don't uninstall precious user data/settings.

Regards, ULFL

P.S: Before playing with the installer, make copies of at least your 
settings ;-)