Quickstart

This page takes you from a clean checkout to a signed, verified installer in four steps. You need a Windows machine with a Rust toolchain. (Packaging machines without Rust are covered in Packaging without the Rust toolchain.)

1. Build the build tool

Everything starts from one tool: installer_builder. Build it once from the workspace root:

cargo build --release -p installer_builder

The binary lands at target\release\installer_builder.exe. It has two subcommands:

Command	What it does
`keygen`	Generate an Ed25519 signing keypair.
`pack`	Pack a directory into a self-contained installer `.exe`.

You do not build the installer stub yourself. By default, pack runs cargo build for the stub and the uninstaller on demand, with your public key compiled in.

2. Generate a signing key

Every installer is signed. Generate a keypair once per product:

.\target\release\installer_builder.exe keygen --out .\keys

This writes keys\priv.key and keys\pub.key. Keep priv.key secret and back it up: there is no recovery if you lose it. See Signing keys for how the two keys work together and how to manage them.

3. Pack your first installer

Point pack at the directory that contains your application's files:

.\target\release\installer_builder.exe pack `
    --product    "My App" `
    --product-id myapp `
    --publisher  "My Company" `
    --to-version 1.0 `
    --input      .\build\myapp-1.0 `
    --exe        myapp.exe `
    --priv-key   .\keys\priv.key `
    --pub-key    .\keys\pub.key `
    --out        .\dist\setup-myapp-1.0.exe

pack scans the input directory, hashes and compresses every file, signs the manifest, builds the stub and uninstaller, and assembles the final .exe. It finishes by running the installer's own --verify as a self-check, so a broken build fails here instead of shipping.

Each option is explained in Full installers. Once the command line grows, move the options into a TOML file and pass --config instead. See The config file.

4. Test the result

Verify the embedded payload without installing anything:

.\dist\setup-myapp-1.0.exe --verify

Then double-click the .exe (or run it from a shell) to walk through the wizard. To try a scripted install:

.\dist\setup-myapp-1.0.exe --silent

Next steps

Sign the .exe. Before distributing, apply an Authenticode signature with your code-signing certificate. The builder prints the exact signtool command after each pack. See Authenticode signing.
Ship updates as patches. A patch installer carries only the delta between two versions. See Patch installers.
Customize the installer. Add a license, a header banner, shortcuts, file associations, and more. Start with Branding.

Optional: hdiffz.exe for patch deltas

Patch installers can ship small binary deltas instead of whole files. Delta generation requires hdiffz.exe next to installer_builder.exe:

target\release\installer_builder.exe
target\release\hdiffz.exe            <- drop it here

Without hdiffz.exe, the builder still produces working patch installers. It falls back to shipping each changed file in full and prints a warning. See Patch installers.

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