Inno Setup Preprocessor: Introduction
Inno Setup Preprocessor (ISPP) is a preprocessor add-on for Inno Setup.
The main purpose of ISPP is to automate compile-time tasks and decrease the probability of typos in your scripts. For example, you can declare an ISPP variable (compile-time variable) – your application name, for instance – and then use its value in several places of your script. If for some reason you need to change the name of your application, you'll have to change it only once in your script. Without ISPP, you would probably need to change all occurrences of your application name throughout the script (AppName, AppVerName, DefaultGroupName etc. [Setup] section directives).
Another example of using ISPP would be gathering version information from your application by reading the version info of an EXE file, and using it in AppVerName [Setup] section directive or anywhere else. Without ISPP, you would have to modify your script each time version of your application changes.
Also, conditional in- and exclusion of portions of script is made possible by ISPP: you can create one single script for different versions/levels of your applications (for example, trial versus fully functional).
Finally, ISPP makes it possible to split long lines using a line spanning symbol.
Note: ISPP works exclusively at compile-time, and has no run-time functionality.
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