Setup stubs

Generic Win32 Setup program. It implements an installer that runs on Windows 9x (95, 98, Me) and Windows NT (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, 32-bit, x64, and IA64) systems and contains all functionality required for those systems.

It will also detect WoW64 situations (i.e., when it runs as a 32-bit application on a 64-bit system) and handle those correctly, both for the 32-bit and the 64-bit portions of the installation, if any.

This Setup program uses ANSI text processing internally and can only handle languages that use the current ANSI code page on the target system.

32-bit Windows NT-specific installer. It implements all NT-specific functionality (in addition to the common Win32 functions), but does not run on Windows 9x-based systems, because it uses Windows functions that are not implemented on Windows 9x systems.

It will also detect WoW64 situations (i.e., when it runs as a 32-bit application on a 64-bit system) and handle those correctly, both for the 32-bit and the 64-bit portions of the installation, if any.

This Setup program uses Unicode text processing internally and can handle all languages that are installed on the target system.

Note: This Setup program is also used for IA64-only Windows NT platforms, because no IA64-specific version is available.

x64 Windows NT-specific installer. It implements all NT-specific functionality but only runs on x64 Windows NT systems. It can install both 32-bit and 64-bit applications on these systems.

This Setup program uses Unicode text processing internally and can handle all languages that are installed on the target system.

Always uses the 32-bit ANSI Setup32a.exe stub, regardless of the build platforms.

This option is useful if you want to ensure that your installation package always uses an ANSI-based installer, for example if you are using an extension DLL and only want to provide its 32-bit ANSI version.

Uses the smallest single SetupXX.exe variation that supports all build platforms.

This usually means the 32-bit ANSI version (Setup32a.exe), unless the Windows 9x platforms are excluded. In that case, the 32-bit Unicode Setup32u.exe is always chosen, because it is the smallest of the NT-based installers.

Uses only 32-bit Setup programs, but includes both ANSI and Unicode versions if required.

This option is a good compromise between size and performance: it will provide Unicode text processing on Windows platforms that support it, but without increasing the size of the distribution package by more than 40 KB.

Includes all SetupXX.exe variations that are required for the various target platforms, but no more. For example, if the Windows 9x versions are not included in the build Platforms, then Setup32a.exe is not included either.

This option ensures that your installer uses the most appropriate installer for each target platform, including Unicode text processing on NT-based platforms and x64-specific installers on x64-based platforms, at the expense of a slightly bigger installation package.

In practice the additional overhead is small because all included Setup stubs are compressed together. A single stub is approximately 80 KB compressed; the two x86 stubs together are 115 KB, and all three stubs compressed together are 200 KB (because the x64 stub doesn't compress very well with the x86 stubs). These sizes are typically very small compared to the remainder of the installation package.