Hello friends of old-school technology ;-)

There is a new release of the GeosOne Dual Installer (GDI) – version 1.10.0.

For everybody who has not met it yet: GDI is an installer for DOS programs, drivers and Windows 3.x software. It is one single INSTALL.EXE with two faces: started from DOS it shows a text mode setup in the style of the good old Qualitas MAX (386MAX) setup – title bar, cyan dialogs and a key bar. Started from Windows 3.1x or 95/98/ME the same file brings up a native Win16 setup. Both read the same INSTALL.INI, so a package author writes the setup once.

What it can do:

• welcome text, up to nine licenses, target directory and options
• adds and removes lines in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
• edits SYSTEM.INI, WIN.INI, Program Manager groups and the Windows 3.x registry – everything journalled
• checked binary patches by byte signature
• INSTALL /U removes everything again and restores the old files and settings; updates of an installed version
• several packages in one run, compressed archives over several disks
• in DOS mode: FDISK, FORMAT and the installation of a whole DOS in one run

What’s new in 1.10.0:

• the installer speaks the language of the system: COUNTRY= under DOS, [intl] of WIN.INI under Windows – English and German so far, English for everything else
• all texts live in one file (src/language.ini); a new language is just a new section, the build makes the C header out of it
• the Windows frontend now runs the installer core itself with real Windows dialogs (licenses, options, progress); only packages that really need DOS still go to the DOS engine
• the sources are split into the installer core, the DOS and Win16 platform parts and two user interfaces
• [Run] Windows= starts a program once under Windows after setup
• uninstall hands a created parent directory over to the packages still in it

Tested in QEMU under MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 (from DOS, through the native frontend and through the DOS engine, in English and German), with the Windows 3.1x update CD and with the MS-DOS 7.1 disk set.

Project Page

Release Page

Have fun with the new release.

If you find any bugs, you can keep them ;-)

mfg

Mario