Asked By
John Parker
20 points
N/A
Posted on - 03/23/2012
I want to make a program which would be compressed and will not require any software to run this.
How to make this type of self extracting program?
Any help will be appreciated.
How to make self extracting program?
Good day John!
You have to archive your program (and all associated and required files) into a self extracting archive file, which do not need a secondary executable that will be extracting it.
This way your compressed program can be distributed as one (self-extracting) file to other machines as long as it is compatible to the other computer's platform.
One popular software capable of creating such self-extracting archive is WinZip.
All you have to do is to create an archive, compress your programs and any other files there and then a .zip file will be created. With that .zip file, you can open it, and you can make it a self extracting executable file.
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Under the Actions menu, click the Make exe file. You will have to enter a path where the files will be extracted.
How to make self extracting program?
If you want to make a self-extracting program, you need to compress it first and then select an option that will make the file self-extracting when it is compressed. When you create a self-extracting program, the file itself no longer needs a file compressor to extract or unpack its contents. A self-extracting file is created with an EXE extension name (.exe).
This means the file or the compressed file is already an executable. Normally, when you compress a file using a file compressor like WinRAR, WinZIP, or 7-Zip, the resulting compressed file is not an executable or it doesn’t have an EXE (.exe) extension. It normally uses the default extension name used by the file compressor like for WinRAR, it uses the RAR extension (.rar); for WinZIP, it uses the ZIP extension (.zip); and for 7-Zip, it uses 7Z (.7z).
In 7-Zip, to create a self-extracting archive, open 7-Zip and then select the file or files to compress. In the “Add to Archive” dialog box, check “Create SFX archive”. Configure your compression parameters and then click OK. Once the compression is finished, the resulting archive is a self-extracting file. It no longer needs the help of 7-Zip to unpack its contents.
Just run the file and it will automatically extract or unpack its contents to a desired location or folder. If you wish to download 7-Zip, visit 7-Zip File Compressor.
