FYI the guidelines have been saying that for the NT platform since at least NT4 to the best of my knowledge (NT 3.1 & 3.5 were before my time) which is around 15 years so far. Microsoft had to create UAC to enforce the rules as developers were happy to ignore them otherwise & thus instil certain expectations in users, usually to the detriment of the users systems. Using a 10 year old platform which has been out of support for 5 years isn't what I'd call sufficient justification. You can't blame Microsoft for how you've conditioned your users.
On the x64/x86 stuff, if you haven't seen Bob Arnson's blog page at http://www.joyofsetup.com/2010/05/14/working-hard-or-hardly-working/ it may help you cut down on needing to copy & paste etc. Using those recommendations I can build the same package as x86 or x64 from the same project & .wxs files simply by selecting the appropriate platform in Visual Studio. Palbinder Sandher Software Deployment Engineer T: +44 (0) 141 945 8500 F: +44 (0) 141 945 8501 http://www.iesve.com **Design, Simulate + Innovate with the <Virtual Environment>** Integrated Environmental Solutions Limited. Registered in Scotland No. SC151456 Registered Office - Helix Building, West Of Scotland Science Park, Glasgow G20 0SP Email Disclaimer -----Original Message----- From: Chris [mailto:h48c...@werritech.com] Sent: 23 May 2011 11:57 To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Cc: Pally Sandher Subject: Re: [WiX-users] A question about MSI capabilities On 23/05/2011 20:01, Pally Sandher wrote: > With regards to "putting the entire app into the users profile area if > on Vista+[1], or program files for XP-" just no. Correct behaviour would > be to put the app into the users profile area *regardless* of operating > system when run by a user without administrator privileges. I get the > impression you're trying to do it that way because on Vista & later, UAC > forces you to whereas on XP & earlier you can break Microsoft's platform > guidelines without consequence. Do it the right way on all systems & > you'll cause yourself less grief trying to test your packages during > development & support your packages once they're out in the wild. I understand what you are saying, but unfortunately I have to deal with the real world; Microsoft's guidelines didn't always say this, especially if you go back to the Windows 95 days, where everything was stuck in program files because there was no admin concept. To put things in perspective, I've been supporting this software long enough that I still remember catching abuse from some users when we moved from 'c:\appname' to 'c:\program files' in 1995, when Win95 came out (prior to that our app was Win32s based). Users will be users, and for > 15 years, they have come to expect programs (and in particular our software) to be installed in a particular place. There's a lot of inertia to overcome and frankly I don't have the energy to argue with them when they inevitably complain, especially given there is no particular advantage to us from doing it that way on XP. In an earlier release of our current beta cycle, I did in fact do as you suggest, and install the files in the one place regardless of OS, but got such a negative reaction from users that I changed the default to program files for XP and Win2k users (we have only recently dropped support for Win95). It's just less of a support hassle. Hopefully Microsoft has made up their mind now and we don't have to go through this again in another 15 years ... > really need to install 64-bit binaries to 64-bit locations the only > properly supported solution is to build 2 packages, one for x86 systems > & one for x64 systems. You can then either bootstrap them together & run I expect that's what I'll continue to do then. I'm currently deploying two MSI's exactly that way; unfortunately as I made the mistake of using InstallShield originally, I have to maintain two setup scripts (albeit with only tiny differences between them; I store them as XML so can copy and paste changes). thanks for the advice, -- Chris ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What Every C/C++ and Fortran developer Should Know! Read this article and learn how Intel has extended the reach of its next-generation tools to help Windows* and Linux* C/C++ and Fortran developers boost performance applications - including clusters. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmay _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
