JOTD
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Today's joke : Installshield 12. [/end of joke] It builds a project "once" and only "once". After that, it crashes and then re-starts itself (which is nice if you think of it). After watching it crash and re-start a few dozen times, I somehow got used to it. Annoyance got replaced with a smile each time I watched it do the stupid routine. It's got a Report-error option which attempts to email an error log to an address - though if you don't have MAPI setup, it brings up the IE email-setup dialog (which was even more annoying). You'd think 12 versions would be good enough to get something as basic to its functionality as the build-process working correctly. :|
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*)Unfortunately, the last time InstallShield didn't suck was back when it still created 16-bit installs.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
Inno Setup[^] rules.
So I've heard. Yet to try it out! :-D Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithMarc Clifton wrote:
Yet to try it out!
By all means, try it! Let me put it this way: I had an InstallShield project that installed two applications, a couple dozen COM servers, three services, and two device drivers. The service and device driver installs required custom actions in a DLL, since the Windows Installer doesn't support device driver installs at all and the service support is buggy. This project took two weeks of full-time effort to get working. I spent a great deal of time editting the MSI tables directly, since InstallShield did such a piss-poor job of keeping their pretty GUI representation and the actual data base tables synced. We had purchased the high-end version of InstallShield for the express reason that it was supposed to support localized installers out of the box. Comes time to translate our install, and we find out that we have to spend $1000 for a Far East language pack, and another $1000 for a European language pack. This was on top of the $1200 we'd already spent on the damn InstallShield package itself. I called InstallShield and complained. Their salesman told me it was my fault that I didn't realize their fully-internationalized edition of InstallShield Developer did not include foreign language resources, endquote, and that I was out of luck. I told him to take his package, fold it until it was all sharp corners, and to... I downloaded Inno Setup, learned it, and replicated our install all in a single day. The Inno Setup version is more robust, more reliable, and a hell of a lot easier to modify. The only disadvantage to it is that it doesn't support the enterprisey-automated-rollout-to-1,000s-of-PC's stuff that MSI-based installs do.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Marc Clifton wrote:
Yet to try it out!
By all means, try it! Let me put it this way: I had an InstallShield project that installed two applications, a couple dozen COM servers, three services, and two device drivers. The service and device driver installs required custom actions in a DLL, since the Windows Installer doesn't support device driver installs at all and the service support is buggy. This project took two weeks of full-time effort to get working. I spent a great deal of time editting the MSI tables directly, since InstallShield did such a piss-poor job of keeping their pretty GUI representation and the actual data base tables synced. We had purchased the high-end version of InstallShield for the express reason that it was supposed to support localized installers out of the box. Comes time to translate our install, and we find out that we have to spend $1000 for a Far East language pack, and another $1000 for a European language pack. This was on top of the $1200 we'd already spent on the damn InstallShield package itself. I called InstallShield and complained. Their salesman told me it was my fault that I didn't realize their fully-internationalized edition of InstallShield Developer did not include foreign language resources, endquote, and that I was out of luck. I told him to take his package, fold it until it was all sharp corners, and to... I downloaded Inno Setup, learned it, and replicated our install all in a single day. The Inno Setup version is more robust, more reliable, and a hell of a lot easier to modify. The only disadvantage to it is that it doesn't support the enterprisey-automated-rollout-to-1,000s-of-PC's stuff that MSI-based installs do.
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
Let me put it this way:
Wow! That's quite the experience. Sold me! :) Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh Smith -
Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
Inno Setup[^] rules.
Does it do MSI format yet. Without the ability to generate MSIs, then the product use is no use to me and a lot of other corporate developers. IT Departments tend to like their software deployed using MSIs via Windows Group Policies. It makes their lives easier whilst making the developers life just a little more frustrating
Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote:
You'd think 12 versions would be good enough to get something as basic to its functionality as the build-process working correctly.
Maybe it should be rewritten in Plain English. In this unique case it couldn't possibly be more fubared.
-- Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.
I don't know, it might actually improve the performance of the crash cycle and it saves diskspace too ;P
Begin Program Crash and restart DoneOr however you this in plain english...WM. What about weapons of mass-construction? "You can always try to smash it with a wrench to fix that. It might actually work" - WillemM
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
Inno Setup[^] rules.
Does it do MSI format yet. Without the ability to generate MSIs, then the product use is no use to me and a lot of other corporate developers. IT Departments tend to like their software deployed using MSIs via Windows Group Policies. It makes their lives easier whilst making the developers life just a little more frustrating
Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
No. AFAIK, there are no plans for supporting MSI. Inno Setup does support a couple modes of 'silent' installation/uninstallation, so it would be possible to wrap an Inno Setup installer (a single EXE, usually) in a simple MSI for use with group policies.
Software Zen:
delete this;