I have a redistributable package installation file, a flash installation file, and an exe installation file.
I want to create a file that combines these three into one and installs them all at once.
From what I searched for, I know you can use advanced installer and wix.
However, the advanced installer is difficult to use because it requires a license.
I'm trying to use wix, a free program, but I'm running out of information.
Does anyone know a tutorial or how to combine three files?
I am a foreigner and have trouble communicating. please understand.
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.
Can someone help me understand how WiX works? I have a directory structure which I would like to create an installer for. I have generated the for the directory structure with heat.exe and when I build the setup project it generates an .msi file but I don't think it installs anything.
Maybe someone can walk me through the steps of generating a .msi installer.
Any advise is appreciated,
Thank you
If you're using Visual Studio:
Install the WiX Toolset V3 Visual Studio plugin.
Install the Wax interactive editor.
Build your project if you haven't already.
Add a new project to the solution containing the project you want to create an installer for.
Choose the template Setup Project for WiX v3.
Name the installer. A personal convention is the name of the project plus ".Setup"
A Product.wxs file will open up. Change the Manufacturer="" value to something like your company name or your name. Keep the file open.
Go to Tools -> WiX Setup Editor
On the left under Root Directory choose InstallFolder
Under Projects to install, choose the project you want to install.
In the red area to the right, you'll see a list of files. These are the output results of your build from step 3.
Click the plus sign next to files you want to copy. They should turn white and change to a Resolved state.
This might look daunting, but you're just telling it what to copy--which would be your project's executable, configs, dll libraries, and images it's dependent upon.
You typically want to copy everything. If there are dll's you know you don't need, it's better to remove them as a dependency from the Visual Studio.
Notice the Product.wxs has changed. It now has the files you checked off in the Setup Editor GUI added to the <Wix><Fragment><ComponentGroup> section. Save that file.
Close the Setup Editor.
Build the setup project you just configured.
Open Windows explorer and go to that project's bin/Debug or bin/Release folder, depending on what mode you built in. There you'll see the .msi that you can copy to where you need.
To make an update, make the necessary changes and then change the version number in that project's Properties -> Application -> Assembly Information. Then also change it in Product.wxs <Wix><Product.Version>. Then just build your setup project again.
Good tutorial here:
http://wix.tramontana.co.hu/
http://www.codeproject.com/Tips/105638/A-quick-introduction-Create-an-MSI-installer-with
They should get you started.
If you learn something about the MSI log that will also help - install the MSI with a command line that includes /L*vx
And "doesn't install anything" should be easy to check - are there are any files installed, or did it create an entry in Programs&Features?
WiX is a language (XML/XSD) that serves as a way of authoring (compiling) Windows Installer (.MSI) databases. WiX doesn't install anything, MSI does.
I maintain an open source project called IsWiX. The concept is simple. IsWiX provides additional WiX project templates (scaffolding) and graphical designers to assist you in creating installer. Then as you gain knowledge of WiX and MSI you can make additional tweaks of the WiX XML by hand and go beyond what IsWiX currently knows how to author.
Here's a video showing how to author, build and test an MSI to deploy an IIS website in a mere 3 minutes.
Update: IsWiX has tutorials now.
After a few 'false starts' trying to learn WiX from online tutorials I noticed that on http://wixtoolset.org/ there is a link to the book "WiX 3.6: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML". You can buy it pretty inexpensively in E-book form from Packt, or also Amazon if you like the easy interface with Kindle.
I found this book to be VERY helpful with every little step regarding the .msi creation process. The book will guide you to create your first .msi in the very 1st chapter! Granted, you have to continue a little more to have a fully functioning .msi, but given the complexity of Wix, this book is terrific. It may not be for the gurus among us, but for those of us who need a little more help to understand the material it's wonderful. I've seen many posts speak to the 'steep learning curve' regarding WiX and it is a complicated process to create a valid .msi, but this book goes a long way toward making that learning curve very bearable.
If you are using the build system 'cmake', then you can use cpack to generate .msi file by setting the cpack generator to wix.
What worked for me best, was this fantastic tutorial video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yf-eDsRrnM
Its best selling points for me was
independent of visual studio version
it describes deploying a .NET (Core) app also
it focuses on what an average app's installer should be capable of (including heat, icon, background image and banner)
you don't have to learn another layer on wix
it gives you good practices on easy package generation and future maintenance
it gives an installer project template which you can reuse: https://github.com/angelsix/youtube/tree/cecd38ea3d5eea11cc75fc0123297ffc3b5e662b/C%23%20General/Windows%20Installer%20Wix%20DotNet%20Core/ConsoleApp1.Installer
I am a Wix novice, first of all. I am trying to create an installer using Wix. I am using Visual Studio 2012 and I have Wix toolkit installed.
In my installer I have a version.ini file which contains the version information. During each build, the version.ini file will be updated. I need to create a folder using the version specified in version.ini and copy some files to that folder created during installation. I prefer the version.ini should not be deployed during installation.
I went through some threads here. What I got is since the version.ini file is present during build time, we need to use it rather than creating custom actions. But I don't know how.
Can someone help? I really appreciate if you could provide sample code.
Thanks,
ssn
My existing WIX works fine. It allows the user to select a number of features, and when the user proceeds after feature selection, it runs a customaction to install the files using command lines tools. (My features relates one to one with files that just happen to be VSIX files that are installed using VSIXINstaller.exe from the command line customaction).
This has been working fine for months, and to date it has included all the files in the installer package itself. The files are first put on disk, and then the command line customaction is run on them locally.
However, my installer has grown quite large to download on its own (because it includes all the feature files that could possibly be installed), and it is preventing people bothering with the download. Becuase most of our users will only select one of the features (not all), what I want to do is host the individual files online somewhere at know URLs, and change the installer so that depending on what features the user selects, download each feature file in turn, save them to the same local folder and run the same cutomaction on them (like before).
So really this is just a change to the installer that already works file when the files are packaged within it. Now instead of having the files within it, they are fetched from a URL first.
Can anyone give me some guidance how to do this?
I'm not sure that you should be using Windows Installer at all but you are benefiting from the feature selection tree. If you are willing to replace that with a custom GUI (e.g., with WinForms or WPF), you could use a WiX Bootstrapper project. It provides for installing ExePackages with downloadable payloads.
You could also split your MSI into one per feature and use those with the bootstrapper.
See this demo, this article and the WiX source code for WiX's bootstrapper.
I'd like to create an installer package to install registration-free COM components (with manifest files included). This would be more or less a self-extracting archive to place some files in a target directory given as commandline argument, but it would also need to check or install some other redistributables like VC++ or DirectX.
The package is supposed to be used in another applications's installer as some kind of redistributable package itself. It should not be registered in the "Program and Features" dialog of Windows but has to be removed with the application. Ideally there should be no changes to the Windows registry.
So far I haven't been very successful. Can anyone please provide me with some hints regarding this use case?
You've got about a dozen different questions in that one question. Start with just creating a simple MSI that successfully installs your files and your manifest. Create a COM client to test it. You can also put AppSearch and LaunchConditions in your MSI to detect your dependencies and not allow installation if they are missing.
That's about all you should have to do for this simple question. As for the other questions.... if you are a redistributable and someone else is silently installing you then it's their job to handle the installation of the other redistributables. Also if they don't want you listed in Programs and Features they can pass the ARPSYSTEMCOMPONENT=1 to your installer and you won't be listed. If they want to uninstall you when they uninstall themselves, that's their problem not yours.
If you are really creating a redistributable to be used by other products, sometimes a merge module is the appropriate solution. They build their MSI files and include your merge module.
Otherwise, reg-free COM is in theory an easy install because you're just installing manifest files and Dlls etc. However I don't understand how that could be used by other apps because (IIRC) a client app exe needs your manifest and Dll in their install folder, so how can they do that when they are not installed yet? Or even if they are installed how can you find them? So that goes back to the merge module idea so they include your merge module and install an exe, your manifest and your Dll in the same location. When they uninstall so do your files.