Try/buy wrapping of installation-ready software for electronic distribution

Abstract

The present invention, generally speaking, provides a semi- or fully-automated process that allows an electronic collection of software titles previously made ready for installation to be Try/Buy enabled. In accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the invention, the process involves, for each of a potentially large number of software programs, identifying how the software program has been made ready for installation, and consulting a table or database to determine how, based on the installation particulars, to unpack and repack the setup file set, or program archives The program archive is unpacked, executable modules are identified, and one or more of thee modules are chosen for Try/Buy wrapping. Repacking may be performed by modifying the program archive or by entirely rebuilding the program archive. The setup ruleset remains unchanged. A secondary executable setup file is therefore optionally provided to perform an additional setup steps that may be required for proper Try/Buy operation. These additional steps may be necessitated by the requirements of certain setup tools that prohibit replacement of a file in the setup file set with a larger file. For those setup tools, the repacking steps involve inserting some information into the original setup file set and appending additional information past the end, and the recombining these material to yield the Try/Buy enabled version of the software.