Thanks for the info. I appreciate all the work you guys do on WiX. I'm a
install novice, but it seems to me that some of the stuff the bootstrapper
has to worry about should probably be done by Windows Installer. For
example, I was surprised to discover that it's part of the bootstrapper's
duty to detect if the current installation is an upgrade and which type of
upgrade it is in order to specify the REINSTALLMODE property to the msi.
" If only I could sleep less. <smile/>"
If you're going to work that many hours, you might as well be a game
developer and have fun. :)
Jim
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rob Mensching
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 1:21 AM
To: Jim Hewes; wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Building a setup.exe
I'm slowly making progress on a new tool for the WiX toolset called "burn"
(see:
http://robmensching.com/blog/archive/2007/04/10/WiX-v3-Roadmap-Draft.aspx).
It is a generic bootstrapper that will eventually handle the things you list
below. It's slow going and not really anything in a state to share yet. If
only I could sleep less. <smile/>
Anyway, that's where I'm moving towards. The existing setupexe project is
as limited as you point out.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Hewes
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 1:36 PM
To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [WiX-users] Building a setup.exe
I've been working on building an installer using Wix. Building an msi seems
to work well and I have no major problem. But where I'm getting bogged down
is in the things surrounding it, such as the setup.exe program. I have a
couple of questions.
1. I've noticed the setupbld.exe utility and I've tried it. It seems to
create a setup.exe with all files packed into a single EXE, which are then
extracted at runtime. That's good. But in addition to that, I also need a
setup.exe that will launch loose, uncompressed files for installation from a
CD. Can it currently do that as well?
2. This isn't so much a question as a feature request. I need for to the
setup.exe to show a language selection dialog to allow the user to select an
installation language (like Installshield does). I think I will probably try
to add it myself to the setupexe project if it never gets added by the Wix
guys.
3. I read about chaining as a way of handling more than one installation. I
currently have this requirement, since I need to install a driver and also
an application that works with the product. For various reasons, it's better
for us not to package these in the same installer. But chaining doesn't seem
like an ideal solution either---I think that automatically launching one
installer after another can be confusing to the end user.
I think a better solution, at least for CD installation, is to begin with a
menu. The menu allows the user to choose what to install; that is, which
installer to run. The menu can list the device installer and the application
installer. It can also allow users to optionally install things like Adobe
Reader if your documentation is in PDF form. I've seen some products that do
this and they have graphically pretty menu programs.
Unfortunately, in doing a search, I didn't find any decent existing software
for developing such a menu program. Can anyone recommend something? Sure,
perhaps it's really just a dialog with buttons, so you can probably write
one yourself (I'm a C++ programmer). But I was hoping to find something
that included some pre-designed fancy graphics, and allowed you to slap
together a menu launcher in an hour or so with no programming. Does this
make sense? Or am I thinking in the wrong direction?
Although I like the feeling of working "close to the metal" with Wix as
compared to some commercial product like InstallShield, I also seem to be
getting slowed by the setup.exe issues outside of the actual msi more than
anything.
Thanks for any comments.
Jim
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