Preferred installation package
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Seriously, do a search on them on the net and see what people are saying. Back a few years ago it had more bugs than a bait shop and it was so complex to use and get working properly we had to pay an expert in Germany to develop our installation script for us. There were still bugs and at one point a huge one that completely knackered us and while hundreds of users were complaining about it on their "support" boards they only fixed it as a paid for update to the newer version. Maybe things have changed, but from what I've heard they haven't. It's right up there with Crystal Reports, Notes etc for hall of infamy in my books.
John Cardinal wrote:
more bugs than a bait shop
I LOL'd :)
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
John Cardinal wrote:
more bugs than a bait shop
I LOL'd :)
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
I've never used Wise or any other setup authoring package other then InstallShield. I started learning and using InstallShield back in 1999 using their native scripting language which is a lot like VB6 code. Since 2002 i've been using InstallShield Professional 7.0 and currently using 10.5 to author MSI setups; Vista will probably force me to upgrade to IS 12.0 soon... IS still has issues, bugs and a learning curve, but most of the complexity comes from the Microsoft's MSI complexity and not InstallShield directly. IS support people are very good and very responsive; However, If I was to start from scratch on a new product.. I would take a serious look at WiX. Microsoft's Open Source Windows Installer package based on XML and hosted on SourceForge http://wix.sourceforge.net/ WiX was developed initially by Microsoft employees before it was made open source, and has also been sweeping through Microsoft as their new standard MSI builder in addition to using the MSBuild tool. According to msft bloggers and channel9 videos; Microsoft uses WiX to author the setups for: 1) VS2005 2) Office 2003 (*not confirmed*) 3) Office 2007 .. and i'm sure a lot of other stuff. If you Don't need to support MSI setups; then InnoSetup is worth looking at!
________________________________ Heston T. Holtmann, B.Sc.Eng. Software Engineer
Heston wrote:
According to msft bloggers and channel9 videos; Microsoft uses WiX to author the setups for: 1) VS2005 2) Office 2003 (*not confirmed*) 3) Office 2007
Now that is scary since they take days to install ;)
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: OpenID/CardSpace - Is it time? Latest Tech Blog Post: Corel Lightning - what is the plan?
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We use a little program called Setup Factory. I like it because its easy to use has a scripting interface and doesn't cost bags of money to buy. Anyone else used both it and InstallSheild? Jbarton
That's what I was going to recommend. IndigoRose Setup Factory ... love it. Used it for years, prefer it to Wise or InstallShield. http://www.indigorose.com/suf/
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That's what I was going to recommend. IndigoRose Setup Factory ... love it. Used it for years, prefer it to Wise or InstallShield. http://www.indigorose.com/suf/
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Is the VS 2005 deployment wizard not sufficient for your purposes? I will stay away from both Installshield and Wise. My application has to do some complex install work and Installshield has given me nothing but grief. IS 7.0 work very good for me, then I upgraded to 10.5 which break the patch creation process finally when I upgraded to IS XI Installshield started crashing during builds. Well after spending some time with their support and hacking the build issue is resolved but I am not happy with Installshield at all.
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Jim Crafton wrote:
consider looking into Wix.
I'm reading lots of good stuff about it. It seems very powerful and it nicely integrates with Visual Studio.
________________________________________________ Personal Blog [ITA] - Tech Blog [ENG] - My Photos ScrewTurn Wiki 2.0
look up the tool in sourceforge called WiXEdit. Once you get the schema stuff down in WiX itself, using WiX Edit is very very intuitive to creating pretty complex installers. When learning WiX start with the XML directly. Adding custom actions and such are a breeze too, there's more and more examples popping up in blogs every month.
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Heston wrote:
According to msft bloggers and channel9 videos; Microsoft uses WiX to author the setups for: 1) VS2005 2) Office 2003 (*not confirmed*) 3) Office 2007
Now that is scary since they take days to install ;)
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: OpenID/CardSpace - Is it time? Latest Tech Blog Post: Corel Lightning - what is the plan?
Scary indeed... All the MSI rules that must be executed and verified before, during and after the setup runs is an insane large number; and that doesn't even include any customer build rules. The documentation and complexity of MSI is just out of this world! but just imaging how long it takes Microsoft's build lab to Compile and BUILD the setup packages in the first place for Office and VS2005.. The nice thing about WiX over the Commercial MSI tools is that the latest version of WiX is now multi-threaded to speed up Build times on dual/quad core machines. http://wix.sourceforge.net/faq.html
________________________________ Heston T. Holtmann, B.Sc.Eng. Software Engineer
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John Cardinal wrote:
Never have, I've tried that free one before which was actually very good, I forget the name of it, we used it for a while until we outgrew it.
On a side note, I had to phone and speak with Installshield support last month and the first person, after trying her best to get out of it, passed me onto another guy, who also tried his best to get out of it.
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
Currently working on C++/CLI in Action for Manning Publications. (*Sample chapter available online*) -
We're looking to buy an installation package, and I was hoping that some folks might have suggestions/tips based on experience. The deployment target is Windows-only, for .NET a app. It seems that there are two very popular choices: InstallShield and Wise. Do you have a recommendation for one or the other? Is there an even better choice? Thanks for any help.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
Installshield driven MSI project or NullSoft Installer (Scriptable)
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage Tech Gossips
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We're looking to buy an installation package, and I was hoping that some folks might have suggestions/tips based on experience. The deployment target is Windows-only, for .NET a app. It seems that there are two very popular choices: InstallShield and Wise. Do you have a recommendation for one or the other? Is there an even better choice? Thanks for any help.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
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A bit late arriving for this thread but I find myself in a similar situation, going to have to make a setup for a client/server application around May time. I used Inno on previous projects and it's OK(ish). I was wondering if I could use the deployment from VS2005 for a solution (including both client and server projects) developed under VC++ 6.0 (.NET1.1), I suppose I'll just have to give it a go. If anyone has tried this and can save me time by saying it's simply impossible I'd appreciate it. The deployment option I have used in a simple C# application (.NET2.0) and I've had a few problems I think related to user privileges. It works fine for some users and not for others in different groups. Thanks y bon weekend.
I have been using the VS2005 setup project for a server product that is still in the development stage. It is easy to get a setup going, but I've been frustrated by some hassles. The biggest warning that I can give is to save copies of the install project file. We are using version control and that has been a live saver a couple times. VS has a tendency to corrupt the project file. The first time it happened, it gave an error about not finding a DLL that was referenced by one of the assemblies. It took a little digging around forums to find that this is a symptom of project file corruption and the only solution is rebuilding the setup project. I was able to get away with pulling the previous version from the archive and redoing the latest changes. I am looking at another installer option before we get further on this install. I have been considering WiX and after these discussions I'm going to take a closer look at InnoSetup, NSIS and InstallAware.