how did you build your installer?
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I used a commercial software to build my installer for my Windows apps. one app is written in C++ and another is written in C#. I felt my commercial software too powerful for my small apps. now start to research alternatives. Would any experts like to share your thoughts and experiences?
diligent hands rule....
My group deploys a large number of relatively small desktop application -- ClickOnce works well for that. The auto-update feature reduces update to about 1%, as we rarely encounter a problem.
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I used a commercial software to build my installer for my Windows apps. one app is written in C++ and another is written in C#. I felt my commercial software too powerful for my small apps. now start to research alternatives. Would any experts like to share your thoughts and experiences?
diligent hands rule....
WixToolset it's free, stable, Plays nice with soure control and can do anything windowsinstaller can. I have build ~200 Setups with it and can recommend it.
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Wow, hey Anna, long time no hear, good to hear from you ! Still around here then ?
Rage wrote:
Wow, hey Anna, long time no hear, good to hear from you ! Still around here then ?
Yep, I've still not decaffeinated, but these days I get to hang from the ceiling* while thinking about my next mug of the stuff. ;) * Not joking. I really do[^]. Seriously though...life's just busy. Between exercise, volunteering and work there's surprisingly little time left for other stuff.
Anna (@annajayne) Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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I used a commercial software to build my installer for my Windows apps. one app is written in C++ and another is written in C#. I felt my commercial software too powerful for my small apps. now start to research alternatives. Would any experts like to share your thoughts and experiences?
diligent hands rule....
I mainly stay with WiX Toolset[^] for distributing desktop apps. It takes a little learning, but you can be up in running in a few hours of learning the xml markup. registering services takes slightly more work, but not a lot. best part is that it's free and lightweight
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I used a commercial software to build my installer for my Windows apps. one app is written in C++ and another is written in C#. I felt my commercial software too powerful for my small apps. now start to research alternatives. Would any experts like to share your thoughts and experiences?
diligent hands rule....
App Packages for Windows 10 side-loading and MS Store distribution (ARM, XBox, PC, Hub). Inno Setup the rest of the time (PC).
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it. ― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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InstallAware[^]. It's an MSI based installer which supports all of the stuff that MSI based installers tend to do. It's expensive and I can't say I can recommend the attitude of their customer service, but it works well enough and at least it's not InstallShield.
Anna (@annajayne) Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
I was using Wise Installation Studio, but that is so old that the cert expired. We bought InstallAware, which I really like. It's very powerful, and our installs need that power. For simple projects, I agree that it would be overkill because of the price. Bond Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
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I was using Wise Installation Studio, but that is so old that the cert expired. We bought InstallAware, which I really like. It's very powerful, and our installs need that power. For simple projects, I agree that it would be overkill because of the price. Bond Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
It's both powerful and expensive, and once you've got it setup it just works. My main bugbears with it are the inadequacy of the MSIcode code editor and the obscure format its source files are stored in (which makes SCC merges basically impossible). But otherwise it just works.
Anna (@annajayne) Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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Rage wrote:
Wow, hey Anna, long time no hear, good to hear from you ! Still around here then ?
Yep, I've still not decaffeinated, but these days I get to hang from the ceiling* while thinking about my next mug of the stuff. ;) * Not joking. I really do[^]. Seriously though...life's just busy. Between exercise, volunteering and work there's surprisingly little time left for other stuff.
Anna (@annajayne) Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
Not joking. I really do
OK, looks like not much changed then :-D Any you're right, days get shorter by one hour every other year. Or so it seems. :sigh:
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Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
Not joking. I really do
OK, looks like not much changed then :-D Any you're right, days get shorter by one hour every other year. Or so it seems. :sigh:
Nah, I just do it with more control[^] now. :cool:
Anna (@annajayne) Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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Nah, I just do it with more control[^] now. :cool:
Anna (@annajayne) Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
:cool::thumbsup:
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I used a commercial software to build my installer for my Windows apps. one app is written in C++ and another is written in C#. I felt my commercial software too powerful for my small apps. now start to research alternatives. Would any experts like to share your thoughts and experiences?
diligent hands rule....
NSIS is open source, easy to setup and automate, text config, community support.
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I used a commercial software to build my installer for my Windows apps. one app is written in C++ and another is written in C#. I felt my commercial software too powerful for my small apps. now start to research alternatives. Would any experts like to share your thoughts and experiences?
diligent hands rule....
We build software that is integrated as a plugin into multiple applications. One app uses Visual Studio Isolated Shell and has a number of plugins. The others are developed entirely in-house. An earlier app that is still in support used InstallShield. There is one person with a license so he has to do all of the work. Consequently he's the only one who knows much about the installer. The new plugins uses WiX. We've been using WiX for quite a while and find it easier to use than InstallShield. Our plugins have about 25 or so assemblies, most of which are installed to the GAC. Other pieces are installed in the app's local folder (the part of the plugin that interfaces between the app and the common code). WiX is great for this.