Windows Installer
From Just Solve the File Format Problem
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Revision as of 14:36, 14 April 2013
The Windows Installer format is adapted from the Cabinet archiving format from Microsoft, used as installation files for Windows software. Various versions of Windows come standard with the installer program which recognizes this format and will automatically launch the installer when you click on one, so it has replaced self-extracting .exe files containing archived installers for the installation of many programs. An archive file of this sort includes the various files that are part of the software package being installed, with metadata about how it should be structured, what registry changes need to be made, and so on.
