Inno Setup: Dynamically add a component for all files in a folder and its subfolders

Question

Inno Setup: Dynamically add all files in a folder and add a component tag, so during running of the setup the user can select custom setup and select which files to copy.

Answer 1

Assuming the files are available on compile time, you can use Inno Setup Preprocessor recursive macro to generate the [Files] and [Components] sections.

This code is partially based on Generating Inno Setup file flags programmatically.

#pragma parseroption -p-

#define FileEntry(Source, Dest) \
    Local[0] = Copy(Dest, 2, Len(Dest) - 1), \
    Local[1] = StringChange(Local[0], ".", ""), \
    "[Files]\n" + \
    "Source: " + Source + "; DestDir: {app}" + ExtractFileDir(Dest) + \
        "; Components: " + Local[1] + "\n" + \
    "[Components]\n" + \
    "Name: " + Local[1] + "; Description: " + ExtractFileName(Dest) + "\n"

#define DirEntry(Source, Dest) \
    Local[0] = Copy(Dest, 2, Len(Dest) - 1), \
    Local[1] = StringChange(Local[0], ".", ""), \
    "[Components]\n" + \
    "Name: " + Local[1] + "; Description: " + ExtractFileName(Dest) + "\n"

#define ProcessFile(Source, Dest, FindResult, FindHandle) \
    FindResult \
        ? \
            Local[0] = FindGetFileName(FindHandle), \
            Local[1] = Source + "\\" + Local[0], \
            Local[2] = Dest + "\\" + Local[0], \
            (Local[0] != "." && Local[0] != ".." \
                ? (DirExists(Local[1]) \
                     ? DirEntry(Local[1], Local[2]) + ProcessFolder(Local[1], Local[2]) \
                     : FileEntry(Local[1], Local[2])) \
                : "") + \
            ProcessFile(Source, Dest, FindNext(FindHandle), FindHandle) \
        : \
            ""

#define ProcessFolder(Source, Dest) \
    Local[0] = FindFirst(Source + "\\*", faAnyFile), \
    ProcessFile(Source, Dest, Local[0], Local[0])

#pragma parseroption -p+

#emit ProcessFolder("D:\SomeDirectory", "")

If D:\SomeDirectory contains these files:

file1.txt
file2.txt
sub1\file11.txt
sub1\file12.txt
sub2\file21.txt
sub2\file22.txt

The above code will generate:

[Files]
Source: D:\SomeDirectory\file1.txt; DestDir: {app}; Components: file1txt
[Components]
Name: file1txt; Description: file1.txt
[Files]
Source: D:\SomeDirectory\file2.txt; DestDir: {app}; Components: file2txt
[Components]
Name: file2txt; Description: file2.txt
[Components]
Name: sub1; Description: sub1
[Files]
Source: D:\SomeDirectory\sub1\file11.txt; DestDir: {app}\sub1; Components: sub1\file11txt
[Components]
Name: sub1\file11txt; Description: file11.txt
[Files]
Source: D:\SomeDirectory\sub1\file12.txt; DestDir: {app}\sub1; Components: sub1\file12txt
[Components]
Name: sub1\file12txt; Description: file12.txt
[Components]
Name: sub2; Description: sub2
[Files]
Source: D:\SomeDirectory\sub2\file21.txt; DestDir: {app}\sub2; Components: sub2\file21txt
[Components]
Name: sub2\file21txt; Description: file21.txt
[Files]
Source: D:\SomeDirectory\sub2\file22.txt; DestDir: {app}\sub2; Components: sub2\file22txt
[Components]
Name: sub2\file22txt; Description: file22.txt

In installer, you will get:

---

Though note that number of files you can process this way is limited by preprocessor stack.

If you get hit by that, the other (though ugly and complex) way is to use user defined procedures. For an example of implementing a recursive files processing both using approach shown here and using user defined procedures, see Inno Setup - Recurse sub directories without creating those same sub directories.