what happens when you install a program? Why is it not sufficient to just download the files?
In: Technology
Installation can do a lot of things, though what specifically it does depends on the program.
First, downloadable programs are usually compressed and archived to minimize their download size, so the installation program will decompress and unarchive the files it needs. In order to run these programs directly from the download files, the program would need to decompress them on-the-fly, which is both complicated and *slow*.
Second, the programs you download often don’t have everything they need to run. Instead they rely on a lot of shared code already being present on the computer (if you’ve ever had a program complain about a missing .dll file, this is what it was talking about). The installation program can find these shared files and let the finished program know where they are. The alternative is to pack all of that shared code in with the download, which can bloat the download by hundreds of megabytes, depending on what shared code is used.
Third, every computer is different. In order to have a single download that “just works” for almost everybody, a program may need to build/select some of its components once it’s actually on the computer and sees what it has to work with. The alternative is to have dozens of different versions of the program and require the user to know enough about their computer’s internals to pick the right one.
An installation program can do a lot of other things as well, but these three are some of the big ones. It could also set some registry values, do some anti-piracy checks, etc. It just depends on the program.
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