WiX
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How did my message get included into yours??
Steve Maier, MCSD MCAD MCTS
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What an excellent tool! I have been experimenting with creating MSI files using the built-in setup project support in VS2005, but needed to do something a little more advanced (i.e. an MSI that allows different components to be included) and was turned onto wix by a colleague. Highly recommended! OK, it's command-line based, which might put some people off, but it is very slick and allows you to create very professional looking setups via special XML config files. Worth a look if you want to create MSI files without shelling out $$$'s for tools such as Wise, InstallMaster, etc. More info here[^]. Excellent tutorial here[^].
Wix is great. I came across it about 3 weeks ago because a MS blogger had posted an installer using WiX. Once you get the hang of the Xml format and whatnot ... it's great, as far as Windows based installers go. Thanks for sharing the Tutorial ... that's very helpful.
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How did my message get included into yours??
Steve Maier, MCSD MCAD MCTS
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What an excellent tool! I have been experimenting with creating MSI files using the built-in setup project support in VS2005, but needed to do something a little more advanced (i.e. an MSI that allows different components to be included) and was turned onto wix by a colleague. Highly recommended! OK, it's command-line based, which might put some people off, but it is very slick and allows you to create very professional looking setups via special XML config files. Worth a look if you want to create MSI files without shelling out $$$'s for tools such as Wise, InstallMaster, etc. More info here[^]. Excellent tutorial here[^].
We moved to WiX a couple of months back. It is the best thing we have done. The command line approach allows us to integrate the whole thing into our build process. We tried others and were using Ghost for our previous release. Some things to be aware of: 1. High learning curve : You have to learn the MSI attributes, and the whole concept of WiX. 2. Self Registration : Is not recommended. So if you are working with COM DLLs we need to assemble the required GUIDs. The good news it the tallow tool makes it easy. 3. Registration of EXE servers : Much much harder. You need a program called regcap that comes with VS2K5. Intergrating this into the build process is tricky. 4. It is quite annoying to specify the LongName and ShortName for each file, even if you are only targeting a platform that supports long names. Overall, the learning curve is not bad. If a team can spend months developing code, a week spent learning WIX is an excellent investment as we found out.
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We moved to WiX a couple of months back. It is the best thing we have done. The command line approach allows us to integrate the whole thing into our build process. We tried others and were using Ghost for our previous release. Some things to be aware of: 1. High learning curve : You have to learn the MSI attributes, and the whole concept of WiX. 2. Self Registration : Is not recommended. So if you are working with COM DLLs we need to assemble the required GUIDs. The good news it the tallow tool makes it easy. 3. Registration of EXE servers : Much much harder. You need a program called regcap that comes with VS2K5. Intergrating this into the build process is tricky. 4. It is quite annoying to specify the LongName and ShortName for each file, even if you are only targeting a platform that supports long names. Overall, the learning curve is not bad. If a team can spend months developing code, a week spent learning WIX is an excellent investment as we found out.
Vivek Rajan wrote:
2. Self Registration : Is not recommended. So if you are working with COM DLLs we need to assemble the required GUIDs. The good news it the tallow tool makes it easy.
Indeed, as I discovered today. I am also just finishing a setup.exe wrapper that includes the MSI file as a resource, extracts it to the temp folder on startup and then launches it thus
msiexec /i msifilename REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vomus- else it means users need to uninstall the old version when they perform a minor upgrade, which I know will cause me problems. Still early days though (actually, today is my first day with WiX!) but it looks good. I also changed the UI to remove the EULA page, which took some tinkering as I forgot to include all the necessary files and couldn't get the MSI to link. -
Vivek Rajan wrote:
2. Self Registration : Is not recommended. So if you are working with COM DLLs we need to assemble the required GUIDs. The good news it the tallow tool makes it easy.
Indeed, as I discovered today. I am also just finishing a setup.exe wrapper that includes the MSI file as a resource, extracts it to the temp folder on startup and then launches it thus
msiexec /i msifilename REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vomus- else it means users need to uninstall the old version when they perform a minor upgrade, which I know will cause me problems. Still early days though (actually, today is my first day with WiX!) but it looks good. I also changed the UI to remove the EULA page, which took some tinkering as I forgot to include all the necessary files and couldn't get the MSI to link.If this is your first day with WiX, download and install a tool called Orca. This allows you to examine the MSI file created by WiX. This tool is part of the Windows Installer Platform SDK. If you dont want a repair mode or the ability to install new features at a later time, then your approach of packaging in a setup.exe sounds good. At least this is what I have learnt in the three months or so that we have been using it.
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This reminds me of the story why the Mitsubishi Pajero didn't sell very well in Spain because "pajero" translates to "faggot" in spainish slang :laugh: source -- modified at 14:12 Thursday 7th September, 2006
Honda came out with a new model called "Fitta" a couple of years ago. They renamed it.. Fitta is a very rude word for vagina in Swedish. :)
-- This episode performed entirely by sock puppets
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What an excellent tool! I have been experimenting with creating MSI files using the built-in setup project support in VS2005, but needed to do something a little more advanced (i.e. an MSI that allows different components to be included) and was turned onto wix by a colleague. Highly recommended! OK, it's command-line based, which might put some people off, but it is very slick and allows you to create very professional looking setups via special XML config files. Worth a look if you want to create MSI files without shelling out $$$'s for tools such as Wise, InstallMaster, etc. More info here[^]. Excellent tutorial here[^].
If you haven't found it already, enable IntelliSense for WiX files. http://weblogs.asp.net/sweinstein/archive/2004/08/31/223461.aspx[^] Those instructions are for VS2003. The settings for VS2005 aren't much different, and everyone here should be able to figure it out without too much trouble. ;)