I have question regarding WiX/MSI packaging, wanted to check feasibility, I have Installer1 bundle with n number of files(probably 100) and have another small installer2 with less no of files(near about 20 files). Now my question is can I package small installer2 into bigger installer1. This is similar approach as most of installers package vcruntime installers in their installers.
Experts do you see any issues in this approach?
You may want to ask question, what type components installer2 has- so it kernel mode drivers and user mode services and some DLLs.
Also you may suggest why we are not bringing one by one component, instead packaging one installer into another installer.
Chained Setups: WiX's Burn module can create setup.exe files with embedded installers that can run in sequence. Installshield also has a feature for this called Suite Projects - see screenshot here.
Hello Burn: Here is a small, hands-on example of a Burn source.
More on Burn: Some more details on WiX / Burn versus other deployment tools.
Two, separate answers here on Burn, Installshield and Advanced Installer
Short, ad-hoc list of various common MSI tools here.
Links:
WIX Toolset I want the ActionData log to continue to be written as a scroll
WIX Installer with modern look and feel
Related
I have a folder containing an exe file and a bunch of other files and a couple other folders. I want to be able to either:
A) Package this all into an installer
or
B) Package the exe and the other files into one singular exe file.
From what I've read, I'm not sure how I'd accomplish either of these with WIX, and I'm 99% sure it's not possible with WIX. Before I dismiss the possibility, I'd like to ask experienced people if I'm right or wrong.
If I can't use WIX, Is there a better alternative?
Thanks for all help.
WiX / Burn: WiX / Burn can indeed make MSI installers or setup.exe wrappers, but it is not trivial to use the toolkit for inexperienced people, and if you have never made a setup before there will be a learning curve. WiX quick start tips.
Burn: Burn is the WiX toolkit's bootstrapper / downloader / chainger tool which allows multiple MSI or setup.exe files to be run in sequence. It allows the creation of a setup.exe which wraps all installer components. Not trivial to learn and use.
Commercial Tools: Quick descriptions of commercial tools Advanced Installer, InstallShield, PACE Suite and some other tools can be found here: Brief descriptions of deployment tools.
And a more elaborate presentation: How to create windows installer.
WIX is highly configurable, and therefore requires some overhead to learn, but it is also very well documented, and gives pretty direct access to windows API's, which are also very well documented.
Packing Existing Files
It is 100% possible to package your files + dependencies into an installer with WIX.
There is a tutorial
Building and Packaging
There is also integration with Visual studio, allowing you to build and run WIX as part of your build.
If you are not using visual studio, that is fine, you can package things with WIX directly, here is
Another tutorial
GUI Installer Creators
If you are completely against the idea of creating your own WIX files and learning the tool set, Advanced installer is a pretty vanilla alternative with a nice GUI
If you really are against making any kind of installer, you can also zip everything up and distribute it that way, can possibly automate this using python.
I have an old installer that is made with InstallShield 2015, its non-MSI based (I tried opening it with 7zip and could not --> non-MSI based, am I right?).
In general, I need to stop using InstallShield and migrate to Wix.
Is it possible some how to convert InstallShield it to Wix?
Using Wix, I need to detect if a previous version (the InstallShield version) is currently installed and automatically uninstall it and then continue with the normal Wix process. Is such a thing possible?
Thank You :-)
I'll add a quick answer for reference, though the problem appears solved already.
If the old Installshield setup is an MSI, you can use dark.exe from the WiX toolkit to "disassemble" an MSI into WiX source code (dark.exe can also decompile WiX setup.exe bundles - there is a somewhat messy description of this here: How can I compare the content of two (or more) MSI files?).
After some cleanup you can compile the WiX source to a new WiX-built MSI. A bit of knowledge and experience is needed for the cleanup to be successful (eliminating GUI sections, add a WiX GUI, realign source paths, clean up binary stream tables, etc... - not trivial, but not rocket science :-).
If the old setup was a legacy installer (not MSI), you can convert it to MSI by using a repackager tool to capture changes done to the system during installation and convert them to an MSI. A lot of knowledge is required to clean up such a capture. If you know the product it is often better to code a new setup "by hand". Or if you are in a large corporation chances are you will have a "repackaging team" available somewhere who will have the expertise to do this job for you.
Yes, old setups can be uninstalled as part of your new MSI.
As you discovered if the old setup was an MSI you can simply use a major upgrade to remove it during the new WiX install.
If the old version was a legacy setup things can get considerably more involved often requiring you to "record" a dialog response file to feed to the uninstaller function of the old setup.exe file. Not at all trivial, and quite error prone. Incidentally one of the major benefits of MSI is the completely suppressible GUI.
For reference, here is an old answer with information on dealing with the infamous setup.exe files that we frequently have to uninstall and upgrade:
How can I use powershell to run through an installer? The setup.exe can be many different things: Installshield Setup, Advanced Installer Setup, Inno Setup, Self-Extracting Zip-Archive, a proprietary setup format, the list goes on...
I'm a bit confused about how wix burn and the main installer are expected to interact with each other. I'm new to wix and windows installer technology in general.
Based on the examples I've seen I was under the impression the burn application would install prereqs then switch to the main installer. However I've seen comments from searches that when using the burn application the main installer becomes secondary and the burn UI should be used instead. This is reinforced by the behavior of the burn application. What I mean is the burn application has it's own license agreement, ARP entry, hides the main installer by default, and has it's own change/repair entry.
This has me confused because the burn application is lacking a lot of functionality the main installer has through MSI. Some functionality I would consider essential such as feature selection, directory selection, and changing features. But this is absent from the burn application.
I feel if I used the burn application as the primary I'd have to recreate the UI, while if I used the main installer for prereqs (if possible) I'd have to recreate the functionality burn provides. Neither approach is desired, so I am wondering how other users of wix handle large projects. Is it standard to write your own custom burn UI? Any help that might clear up this confusion would be greatly appreciated.
Common practice would be to use the Wix bootstrapper (burn) specifically for installing software that is necessary to run your main application, first and automatically.
You would indeed use the main MSI produced by Wix to install your main application. You would use one of the UI (dialog set) sequences already available in Wix. The dialog set will be applicable only for the main MSI, because again, the bootstrapper's main responsibility is to install pre-requisite software for your application to be able to run.
The whole installation process involving your application MSI in conjunction with the bootstrapper executable would be as follows:
Pre-installation
You would build your application MSI.
You would make sure your MSI is specified in your bootstrapper .wxs file.
You would build a Wix bootstrapper executable file which, if correctly set, would
include your appplication MSI.
Installation
You simply run the bootstrapper executable file.
All pre-requisite software will be installed first.
Your main application MSI will now be executed. The user will now be able to set e.q. the installation directory of your application through the dialog sequence of your main MSI (including the other points you've mentioned, if the correct dialog sequence set has been selected before building).
Hope this helps to clear out things a little bit!
I'm looking for a tool (preferably not InstallShield, and also preferably cheap/Free) that supports Chained MSI Installations. I've got several small installations that need to be able to be deployed separately, but also as one group, and I'd like to not have to maintain multiple installers.
It looks like I need Windows Installer 4.5 to do this properly, but I can't seem to find to much info when I'm looking around for what version of Installer is supported.
The MSI 4.5 functionality is just a set of APIs that allow bootstrapper/chainers to do smarter things for multiple MSIs. You still need a bootstrapper/chainer to install multiple packages. In WiX v3.6 there will Burn.
Incidentally, it used to be possible--although not particularly easy--to "nest" or embed other MSIs into one parent, but it involved tweaking custom actions and such to ensure that the nested programs were removed upon removal of the parent, etc. Sadly, this feature is "deprecated" and thus no longer recommended by Microsoft. Here's how to do it in a Visual Studio installer project... but creating a bootstrapper with WiX would be more advised.
What you need is a bootstrapper. Using and InstallShield or Wix will created an MSI themselves which when that is running will not allow the other smaller MSIs to run. If you already have the smaller MSIs to run a bootstrapper is all you need.
MSDN has a free one you can download that plugs into VS2008 and uses MSBuild to compile. What you will probably need to do is create packages for your MSIs and put them in the bootstrapper as prerequisites. This will allow you to set it up to run them in a particular order.
Here is the MSDN link: MSDN Bootstrapper Manifest Generator
Look at NSIS
I'm trying to find a solution for the following issue:
I have numerous programs (lets call them slaves) that all rely on a single program (master). I need to distribute an installer for each slave. This installer needs to install the master.
I want to be able to version both pieces, so multiple msi's appear to be the right solution, chained with a bootstrapper.
My problem is if a slave installer installs the same version of the master that is already installed, the .msi will run in repair/remove mode.
This is unacceptable from a user standpoint and will just cause confusion.
Is there any way to check for a version of the currently installed fiels before trying to run the msi?
I am currently using WIX's setupbld.exe as a bootstrapper.
Any other solutions greatly appreciated (I have also tried merge modules with no success, since the versioning is useless)
Instead of using setupbld.exe (which I don't really know as I can't find any documentation) you can use msbuild's generatebootstrapper task. The wix documentation already covers how to use this task to generate a bootstrapper that installs the .NET framework. See How To: Install the .NET Framework Using a Bootstrapper. This makes use of the pre-defined bootstrapper packages.
However, in this case you will also have to author your own bootstrapper packages. One way to do this is to study the existing bootstrapper packages in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\ (or the ones in the Windows SDK) and read the documentation of the Bootstrapper Manifest XML format. The bootstrapper generator tool might also be helpful.
To determine whether the package needs to be installed, you can use one of the InstallChecks to set a property, and then check the property value in a InstallCondition under the Commands element.
If you're thinking that this is all harder than it should be — I agree, but it's what I've used so far. There are some alternatives which I have not tried yet:
the poorly named dotNetInstaller
which is actually a general purpose
bootstrapper generator.
the wix 3.5 burn bootstrapper which is not yet released. I'm not sure if it is in a usable state yet.