I use Inno Setup and ISS Studio for my installers. The editors in both leave something to be desired for me, and I'd prefer to edit my .ISS scripts in the Delphi IDE, but doing so loses syntax highlighting.
I've tried RAD&Installer, but it's so buggy (tons of UAEs, doesn't uninstall properly from D11 Alexandria, etc.) that it's unusable. I've searched for something comparable without success. I know that I could write it myself using the NTA/OTA support in the IDE, but I'm completely unfamiliar with using those interfaces so there'd be a healthy learning curve, and time constraints prevent me from tackling that big a project for several months.
Does anyone know of such a plugin for the IDE other than RAD&Installer? Alternately, is there example code somewhere that demonstrates adding IDE syntax-highlighting support for alternate file formats?
(Being able to compile scripts in the IDE would be sweet, but for now I'd settle for just being able to edit the scripts with highlighting.)
I am one of the original developers of RAD & Installer who started the development of this tool few years ago.
Honestly I can say: What you are asking for is enormous task. Writing such IDE extension (expert) is really difficult, especially because of the variety of IDEs, platforms, OS versions and other combinations that may happen and it takes months and months of work.
The Open Tools API (OTA) is not so popular as other interfaces (e.g. Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE), working with it is mostly trial-error approach. I recommend to visit the https://www.gexperts.org/open-tools-api-faq/, this site has very good examples for starting, also see the doc in the ToolsAPI.pas file provided by Embarcadero.
For any specific Open Tools API questions feel free to ask here, I will try to answer with all my knowledge, but do not expect to paste all million lines of code here.
I understand you are not 100% satisfied with R&I, we know there are some issues. Especially the AVs are unpleasant as there are thrown directly from the IDE which cannot be fixed within the expert.
But the IDE is improving in each version, the new version 12 Alexandria is the best IDE so far and the devs at Embarcadero did an amazing work and fixed many, many, really MANY issues. Please try that version and if some issue occur do not hesitate report the issue and the R&I devs will have a look on that and try to fix that.