InstallBuilder 19.5.0 is now available and comes with an important update.
As you may know, InstallBuilder already comes with support for building native 64-bit installers for Linux and macOS. We are happy to announce that we've added support for building native 64bit installers for Windows as well.
This provides multiple benefits compared to existing approach. While previously it was possible to make InstallBuilder installers behave like a 64-bit application, the binary runtime was actually 32-bit binary and required 32-bit support in the operating system.
With the new approach, it is possible to use the installers inside Windows flavors that only allow running 64-bit binaries, such as Windows Nano Server. Creating 64-bit binaries also allows configuring larger block sizes for the installer, by setting larger values for the <lzmaUltraBlockSize> project property. This allows the creation of smaller installers. However, with the 32-bit binaries, setting the block size increases memory usage and memory fragmentation, which can lead to the installer failing. This is now possible and fully supported with 64-bit Windows binaries.
To build native 64bit installers, all that is needed is to specify `windows-x64` as the build platform - such as the by running the following in the command line:
./builder.exe build sample.xml windows-x64
Here is the complete list of changes for version 19.5.0: