On 21 June 2018 at 04:42, Tom Kent via Boost-users <boost-users@lists.boost.org> wrote:

The reason for the installers is mostly historical...it seemed easier for users to run an installer than to unzip stuff. Not sure if this still holds true, I'd be curious what the user community thinks about this.

My 2 cents is that a slightly savage user will be reluctant to run an executable (if they are already suspicious) and will take the .7z file. The less experienced user probably runs the executable. There ought to be a way where the person(s) putting this online can give assurances that no bad will come of running it, this is easier said than done.

 

The all-versions .7z was added later, because of its size it was somewhat impractical to get into an installer, so it was distributed as a compressed archive.

I don't know what the "installer" entails, but if it's just an auto run compressed file, then one can, with the command-line utility (7za.exe), make a sfx archive using the command-line switch -sfx (in addition to any commands and other switches).