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I'm selling a php script which customers can install and run on their own sites. Currently the install process is a somewhat "standard" one...that is:
1. Check if your hosting covers the install requirements
2. Download a zip package
3. Unzip
4. Upload to server
5. Read install instructions
6. Create mysql DB
7. Set up folder permissions where needed
8. Run install.php
9. FINALLY..we're done!

This all may not be a rocket science but even for an expreienced user it's way too clumsy of a procedure. So, I'm thinking to start providing just one setup.php file instead of a whole package. The user will create a /myscript folder on the server, upload setup.php there and run it. Then setup.php downloads all the needed files from my server and the whole installation thing is done automatically (except the DB creation, which the user has to do himself). That should be much more user-friendly and you don't need to read a manual just so you can install the damn thing.

So, I'm going to create such a setup script but before I start, my question is - why isn't everyone doing it? Laziness is the most obvious excuse - let the user sweat over the installation, if they want the software bad enough, they'll install it somehow anyway. But even the big companies are following the same "standard" so there must be something else. Can you think of any technical obstacle that will prevent such a setup script from working good enough and that's why everyone is resorting to using downloadable zip packages?

Thanks!

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Not all hosters allow file-downloads via PHP. And since you are downloading a zip-file, you'll need to unzip it. Which is probably the biggest obstacle.

system() and the like are very often forbidden, and unzip is also very often not installed due to security issues.

When having all required files in a package you are always on the safe side.

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Yes, outbound connections (which are needed for file download) are not always allowed but I think that's quite rare. My software already requires it anyway for license check and from my experience it's usually not a problem. I thought about unzip too but that can be overcome by downloading files one by one instead of the whole package. Not very effective but still faster than user uploading it. I guess the problem is if I would be able to use mkdir(), chmod() and chown but my understanding is that these are available if the script has the same UID as the folder it's in...even in safe_mode.

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