Thanks.
John Vottero wrote:
>>Maybe what I'm proposing is not a good use. But maybe you
>>don't understand the context of the unique kind of software
>>family I'm trying to install. How could you understand?
>>
>>Sometimes there are good solutions that are different from
>>what the designer of a tool might have planned. Sometimes
>>there are just bad solutions. It's ultimately up to me.
>>
>>I appreciate the free, friendly advice, but I had a hard
>>time getting a simple answer. The response could have been
>>"Yes, here's how to do it, but I don't recommend".
>>
>>You mentioned self-extracting .exe tools. Are you referring to
>>just a self-extracting zip exe? Or are there such tools that
>>might also set up shortcuts, display a user agreement, and
>>have an attractive appearance? Anything you could point me to?
>
>
> You probably already have one. Iexpress.exe is part of Internet
> Explorer and it will bundle up a bunch of files into a self extracting
> executable. Just run iexpress.exe.
>
> Windows Installer does a lot of good things and WiX is, by far, the best
> thing I've seen for creating Windows Installers but, if you don't want
> the things that windows installer provides, then WiX is not much fun.
> To do a UI in WiX, you basically have to hand edit XML that describes
> the dialogs. You have to lay things out pixel by pixel (or dialog unit
> by dialog unit, I don't know).
>
> If I were in your shoes, I would write a Winforms app in C# (or VB.Net)
> to do the install. You can use the classes in the System.IO.Compression
> namespace to unzip your files. Creating a GUI is a lot easier in C#.
> Even running an external zip is easier, running unzip via WiX would be
> something like:
>
> <CustomAction
> Id="SetUnzipProp"
> Property="UnzipProp"
> Value="UNZIP "[#YOURZIPFILEID]""/>
>
> <Property Id="QtExecCmdTimeout" Value="6000000"/>
> <CustomAction
> Id="UnzipProp"
> BinaryKey="wixca"
> DllEntry="CAQuietExec"
> Execute="deferred"
> Impersonate="yes"
> Return="check"/>
> <Binary Id="wixca" src="wixca.dll"/>
>
> And, in C# it would be:
>
> Process.Start("UNZIP.EXE", "YOURZIPFILE.ZIP");
>
> You might also consider a combination (which is what we do). We use WiX
> to create Windows Installers that install various parts of our
> application. We then wrote a C# app that does the installation GUI and
> checks things like SQL server and MSMQ and decides what parts of our app
> need to be installed then it installs our MSIs. We then use
> iexpress.exe to bundle it all together.
>
> John Vottero
>
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