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I remember that "World of Warcraft" didn't require installation to run. You could copy the program's directory from the hard drive onto a different computer and run the executable. You could even run the executable from a USB flash drive on any windows computer you plug it into. This is obviously different from the gross majority of programs which require the installation program to run in order to work properly.

How many reasons are there from software to require installation?

What are they?

Is there any reason why "World of Warcraft" was made differently? Why didn't it need to make any changes to the system registry, for example?

Stein Åsmul
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Lorry Laurence mcLarry
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Most applications require various components registered in the system's registry, and the installation of runtime components that involve files being installed to different locations than the application folder.

Generally a setup performs many different functions and this post provides a quick summary of a few of them: What is the benefit and real purpose of program installation?

Community
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Stein Åsmul
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Some people are advocates of "XCOPY" deployment. IOW, no installer. I'm not a fan of this. For even a simple EXE program you probably still want to copy it to somewhere other then the Desktop folder or the Downloads folder and then you probably want to create a shortcut for it in the start menu.

A per-user application could do this for you on first run. But that's really just a simple installer baked into the application.

In a corporate environment you really want to be able to manage thousands of machines remotely in a standardized way. This is why we want installers that can operate (install and uninstall ) silently without interaction. We also want logfiles for troubleshooting. We want entries in Programs and Features so we can inventory and report on what products and versions are out in production. We also like if products can repair themselves.

From there installers do all kinds of things. Create folders, files, register COM servers, create registry entries, create event logs / sources, shortcuts, windows services, execute SQL scripts, create websites, install drivers, create scheduled tasks install prereps (C++, JRE, .NET FRamework runtimes) and so on and so on.

Christopher Painter
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