Three thoughts come to mind: 1. Most of what you are looking for can easily be achieved using Features (a concept in Windows Installer that WiX supports quite well), although rolling back would be difficult-to-impossible (all the rest of your requirements would be relatively easy to meet).
2. If you use a boostrapper/chainer that supplies UI, you can make multiple MSI packages (one for each application) and bundle them into the chainer (so they appear to be one product). 3. If you can require a minimum MSI version of 4.5, you can make use of "Multiple-Package Installations" and do #2 using Windows Installer as your chainer. You may need a simple bootstrapper to ensure MSI 4.5 (especially with Vista RTM and XP machines) but this will permit using group policy and similar administrative push systems that allow MSIs but don't allow EXEs to install your suite of applications. -----Original Message----- From: Craig Lemon [mailto:craig.le...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2010 5:42 PM To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [WiX-users] [off-topic] Installer architecture Hi All, First of all, apologies for this off-topic post. I am looking for some suggestions on the architecture of an installer for a related group of applications, and looking at replacing existing tool set with Wix - hence posting to Wix list. I am part of a team that develop applications for a mission critical 24/7 environment. We have a main application and numerous (15+) applications that sit alongside. What we have currently is a single installer that installs all of our applications as one installation. When it comes to update one of the applications we currently copy in the new binaries, replacing the existing. We can stop one or two applications at a time, but as this is a mission critical 24/7 environment, we cannot stop ALL applications to run an update installer that may only update one or two components. For example, we have app1, app2, app3 app4 etc. Initially we have an installation that installs all of these applications, under one install key. Then app1 has a bug identified and fixed. The fix requires a new executable be distributed. The only change is a new executable for app1 ... no changes to app2, app3 or app4. The current process sees us stop app1 only, manually copy in the new executable and start app1 again. So moving forward, what I am after is an installer architecture that allows the following 1) First-up install of all components - in one install 2) An update of individual components 3) Facility of rollback to a previously updated component should the need arise 4) Ability to update all components if required I would be happy for the initial install to install each component separately, but only want to have to run a single install. Thoughts/suggestions welcome. thanks in advance, Craig --- Craig Lemon 19 Princess Terrace, Newtown, Wellington 6021, NEW ZEALAND P: +64 4 977 7242 M: +64 27 414 4211 mailto:craig.le...@gmail.com --- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
