From Forum Nokia Wiki

SIS is an acronym that stands for Symbian Installation System. It is an installation file for Symbian OS, and not an application file. Basically a SIS file includes the following:

• Application: The file with an extension of .EXE (in case of pre v9 it is .APP for UI-based and .EXE for console-based applications).
• Library files: Static libraries will have an extension of .LIB and dynamic one will have an extension of .DLL.
• Resources: The file with .RSC extension, which is the resource file for an application. The resource file's extension may change according to the languages, in which case it would be .R01, .R02, .R03 etc,.
• Bitmaps: These are the bitmap files with an extension of .MBM or .MIF.
• Embedded SIS: A SIS file file can contain another SIS file, too.
• Application Config: These are user-defined files, the extension may vary.

Generally the tool MakeSIS is used to create a SIS file from a Package File.

Alternatively, you can produce a .SIS file using the Sisar tool provided with the S60 2nd Edition SDK. Sisar packages all the application files into one .SIS file to ease the installation on to the target.

Also see SignSIS, CreateSIS and DumpSIS.

References

• Symbian OS v9.x SIS file format specification.
• How to create a SIS file.
• SIS file format.

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