It's rather ironic that the Microsoft folks, including the .NET team, are just
like us. In the case of (say) the 3.0 .NET FW they have something like 5 MSIs
to install, consequently they have a bootstrapper to tie them together. So they
don't really treat their product as a redist but rather as an actual product.
I'm not complaining, just finding it interesting that we all have the same
problems to solve. VS 2008 SP1 is similar.
There are reasons to keep these setups separate from yours, mainly the
requirement for admin rights to install them which may not be the case with
your app install.
It's not really all that safe for your own bootstrapper to check for Windows
Installer because you don't know the minimum required level. You could insist
on 3.0 perhaps, but you won't know what you need unless you look at all the
embedded MSI files to see what they want. Also, one version of the .NET FW
shipped with an embedded update to the MSI engine, obviously something that
needs installing first, so unless we can guarantee that they'll never do that
again it rules out thinking about attempts to run a .NET FW install from a
running MSI (leaving aside the other issues). Even in MSI 4.5 and a multi-MSI
transaction I wouldn't like to reboot half-way through to restart where we left
off to update the MSI engine (and I don't know what 4.5 does in this situation).
Phil Wilson
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Neil Enns
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 6:27 PM
To: Adam Majer; wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Installing .NET 3.5 redist?
The problem with option 1 is that it means we have to give up control of the
end-to-end install and out of box experience for our product. When you are
trying to construct a carefully designed user experience and impression of your
application, a bootstrapper is a pretty fugly addition to the mix. Contrast
that with our DirectX 9.0 install, which we can seamlessly fold into our
installer with no need for intervention by the user.
I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why the .NET team had to go with the
distribution solution they did. It just means our final experience winds up
being less than we'd hoped. Ah well.
Neil
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Adam Majer [EMAIL
PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 6:21 PM
To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Installing .NET 3.5 redist?
Christopher Painter wrote:
> The WiX `philosophy` seems to be don't add .NET dependencies to your
> install and don't redist the framework. Just do an AppSearch/Launch
> Condition and tell the user to go do it on their own. Personally
> this conflicts with my needs and results in one of the many reasons why
> I can't use WiX even though I'd like to.
The limitation is with Windows Installer, *not* WiX. The correct way of
doing this is either,
1. a bootstrapper that will check for MSI and install it if needed, or
2. just ship your MSI with the requirement condition and let the
destination deal with installing .NET 3.5.
For corporate deployments, #2 is probably best while option #1 is better
for the home user.
MSI is just a single-transaction-at-a-time installer. It is not like
Debian's APT that can install dozens if not more dependencies for you at
the same time as it installs or upgrades hundreds of other applications.
- Adam
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