What is better: same installer for 32/64 bit or different?

Question

Is it an anti pattern to have a single installer for 32 and 64 bit versions of a system? Is it better to separate the installers?

Answer 1

This depends on your application, and also on the user base you are targeting with the application. If the application has different binaries (DLLs or EXEs) for 32 and 64 bit machines, then you can start thinking about creating different installers, but it is not mandatory.

You could have a single 32 bit package, that installs on both 32 and 64 bit machines, and conditionally installs the corespondent files, i.e. 32 or 64, based on the machine architecture.

If you can give me more details about the application, what files and registry does it installs and what other system resources it needs, maybe I can give you a more detailed solution. Also, it would help to know with what tool you are building the installer.

Regarding your users, it is ok to place on your web site two download links if your users are tech savy, but if most of your users don't have any idea what is the difference between a 32 and 64 bit OS this will only give them problems, and maybe even affect your download rates, because they do not know what application to download and will choose to get it from a competitor which presents them with simple download options.