Thanks Rob. Are there any other non-MSI based approaches that you feel may be worthy of consideration?
I feel very confident in my ability to deliver an MSI based solution for n-Tier ASP.NET solution, I just want to make sure I'm not ignoring other reasonable solutions. ---------------------------------------- From: "Rob Mensching" <r...@robmensching.com> Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 10:46 AM To: "Christopher Painter" <chr...@iswix.com>, "General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset." <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] WebDeploy vs MSI I dislike WebDeploy for a number of reasons: 0. Fundamentally, WebDeploy operates using a "sync" concept. It tries to make a machine look like other machines. You can package up a bunch of these settings but it's still just applying settings to make the machine look like another. That fundamental approach leads to the real issues. 1. The changes are not transacted. If WebDeploy fails it leaves your machine in whatever state it is halfway through the install. You have to keep banging on install and hope it completes or deal with the halfway state. There isn't anyway to go back to the way it was (that you can get with a properly written .msi file). 2. There is no indication that a piece of software is installed. WebDeploy doesn't register anything anywhere. Wondering later what software is on the machine? Uhh, do a "human-based appsearch" to inspect the machine and guess. <smile/> Those are the things I can think of this morning. I've used WebDeploy to post to my cheap ISP and have hit the above issues. The second is less a problem because the apps I'm pushing to my ISP are just my tiny apps that only have the "current" version. The first bit me though. My site was offline for quite a while one day as I tried to bang through a WebDeploy because some FTP component running on the server kept locking one of the files it wanted to deploy. WebDeploy just kept choking on the file in use... eventually they rebooted the server (did I mention it is a cheap ISP?) and then I could finish my WebDeploy. That said, with cloud machine images being treated like throwaway parts, some people don't care about the issues above and are happy to just start over when anything goes wrong. Personally, I still prefer a bit more knowledge and ability to verify that something went wrong before brining the images online but that's just me. On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 6:48 PM, Christopher Painter <chr...@iswix.com> wrote: A question for the group, and Rob, I've been a big believer in MSI for 10 years now. If you were looking at deploying ASP.NET apps to an AWS environment, would you still package the app as an MSI or would you consider another paradigm such as WebDeploy? Thanks, Chris ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book "Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. This 200-page book is written by three acclaimed leaders in the field. The early access version is available now. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/neotech_d2d_may _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book "Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. This 200-page book is written by three acclaimed leaders in the field. The early access version is available now. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/neotech_d2d_may _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
