Installers

Introduced in Bottles 2022.2.14, installers are set of rules which Bottles uses to automate the installation of the softwares. They define the required dependencies, tweaks and other things to install a software. We call them Actions and they are defined in the Actions section.

How Bottles handles installers?

Bottles is not just another wineprefix manager, it comes with a set of integrated managers (e.g. the dependency manager, the WINE backend, runtime ..) that all together manage the operations of your bottles. The installers integrate with all of these managers, functioning as an orchestrator and giving orders to each one to reproduce an installation (installing dependencies, updating the bottle configuration, launching executables, editing configuration files, etc.).

Even if this system has already been seen in other software, in Bottles everything is managed internally and no external tools are used. This choice is given by the need to have an extremely integrated and easily traceable system, as well as ensuring a better user experience and avoiding the “puzzle” sensation that sometimes fails.

When should installers be used?

Installers automate the installation process but that doesn’t mean you should always use them. These require maintenance as programs receive updates and resources can change location. For this reason it is convenient to use this system only for programs that require interventions to be installed.

Let’s take some examples:

• Epic Games Launcher
  it requires some dependencies to works, so it is a good idea to make an installer for it.
• Notepad++
  it doesn’t require any dependencies or tweaks, so an installer is not necessary.

This does not mean that you cannot create installers for programs that work out of the box but that you need to consider whether you will have the time to keep them up to date and therefore worth it.