What is Big Hairy Installer?

Big Hairy Installer is a Macintosh installation maker app, which lets you easily customize distribution of applications, games and system components to your customers.  Big Hairy Installer uses text files to configure the installer you create but can also spawn AppleScripts to help with the files deployment on the host systems.

 

From the Read Me file:

Welcome to the most obnoxiously named software installer on the planet!

Big Hairy Installer uses text files and graphic files to do all of its work. It puts a nice face on moving files around, which is perfect for CD installs where compression is not really necessary.

To see the 'Old Style' installation, rename the 'Installer Files' folder (to anything else) and simply remove the 'Old Style' from the name of the 'Old Style Installer Files' folder.

By naming a file 'debug' and putting it in the same directory as the installer itself, you get access to special abilities of BHI that will help you solve most installation setup headaches.

The best way to learn how it all works is simply to play around with the files and use the 'debug' option.

Many people have asked why I went to all the trouble of putting this program together and didn't create a visual editor for creating the screens. The simple reason is that this is the last version of BHI. The next version will be likely named something else, will have a visual editor and many other niceties, and will likely cost much more.

BHI has a one-time licensing fee of $25. You can email me at chilton@tca.net for info on how to register. Also, feel free to send any suggestions you have my way, as I'll likely assimilate them into the next creation, whatever name it goes by.

-Chilton Webb
WebbToys.com

 

 

Big Hairy Install File Guide:

There are two Install commands, File and Folder. They will copy something from one path to another. Also see section "6. AppleScript" for info on spawning AppleScript commands.

There is a basic structure to the Install command:
condition·command·source·destination

The condtion is the name of the conditions file.
The command will either be "file" or "folder"
The source is the path that the command will copy from
The destination is the path that the command will copy to
The AltIconID is the id number of the icon in the app's resource fork. Most of the time, apps use an id of 128. If you don't specify an alternative number, that's what it will use.
The AutoAdvance flag should be set to "true" if you want to automatically move to the next screen after this action has taken place.

Notes:
The destination will always be the enclosing folder that you want the duplicate to appear in. Do not include the name of the destination file in the destination path. It will use whatever name it has prior to duplication. In a prior version, you included the name you wanted the duplicated file to take on after duplication. In order to simplify the installer, this has been removed.

All file and folder duplications will now overwrite existing files and folders, so please be careful and use conditions when necessary.

A new condition has been introduced, "true". True will always duplicate the file or folder, and no conditional check is performed.

Examples:
conditions 2·folder·Netsurfer f·<Startup Disk>
conditions 3·folder·Netsurfer·<Prefs>
true·folder·InternetConfig2.0·<Startup Disk>
true·file·Misc:Internet Config Extension·<Extensions>
AutoAdvance·true

 

Download Big Hairy Installer for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.0 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Architecture: 68K + PPC (FAT)

Mac OS 7.x - Mac OS 9.2.2

 

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver