I'm very new to WiX based applications, and I need to create an MSI file where it has to check for .NET Framework 4.0 and SQL Server 2008. If they are not installed, I have to get them installed first and then have to install my application's EXE file and one more VBScript agent. It must be done like when you install WiX 3.7 setup (if we double click the setup file, it will show a UI as shown below!
Where do I start? Is there any step-by-step guide to develop this kind of application?
You'll need the following projects. They can be created from project templates in Visual Studio. Each of them would probably have separate tutorials that you might find with a Web search.
A WiX Setup project to build an .msi. The source files for such a project declare a WiX/Product. It could have conditions that check for .Net Framework4.0 and SQL Server 2008. If a check fails, installation of the .msi will fail, which is all that can be done in an .msi. The project would include your application .exe as a Component.
A WiX Bootstrapper project to build an .exe. The source files for such a project declare a WiX/Bundle. In the bundle is a Chain of installers, which would include .Net Framework4.0, SQL Server 2008, your .msi, and your VBScript Agent.
A WPF Library project to provide a BootstrapperApplication implementation with a custom UI for the bootstrapper project.
Your best bet is to consult the documentation, the WiX source code and various tutorials. Keep in the mind that tutorials might be out-of-date--in most cases WiX has gotten simpler with each version.
Related
I have a dll project which I need to install into the GAC, on our Production machines.
(I wish I didn't have to use the GAC but SSIS insists)
gacutil.exe is not available on the target machines and using "Enterprise.Services" from PowerShell does not work (I don't know why)
My understanding is I should created a msi installer project.
However after installing the Setup and Deploy Extension to Visual Studio (2015 soon to be 2017), I discovered those projects cannot be built by our Build Server because it uses MSBuild, and MSBuild can't build vdproj project files.
What is the correct way, using a CI build pipeline (MSBuild), to create build artifacts, which can install dlls to the GAC, of a Production Environment?
Note: there are several partial answers on SO, but I could not find any, which were up to date/answer my whole question. Please keep that in mind when answering.
You need to break this down into several user stories. You aren't finding partial answers, you are finding actual answers for specific questions. What you ask is more like an epic.
In general I would create an MSI using Windows Installer XML. WiX/MSI can install files to the GAC without using GACUTIL. If you use the WiX Visual Studio extension "Votive" you can create a .SLN / .WIXPROJ / .WXS that can be built using MSBuild. You can then put this into a source control system such as Git/TFVC/Subversion and use a build system such as VSTS V.Next Build, XAML Build, Concourse, Jenkins to automation the pipeline to build the MSI.
I am trying to create an installer that will get the project to install from my server. The project will be chosen dynamically by the user (the user has access to the server), so I can't copy the files to the installer when I create it.
I want that the files will add to to ProgramFilesFolder in the installer.
How can I do this?
Not entirely sure what you want to do. Do you want to automatically add files to a project that they select and then build and MSI? Installshield can be run via automation (i.e via VBScript, VB, C# etc...), and you can achieve what you want using this approach. To work with a project you start from the ISWiProject Object. See this answer: Installshield Build Automation. And for C#: Getting Started with InstallShield Automation and C#.
Personally I would use Wix instead and automate via the Heat.exe tool and standard XML editing via code.
See how Installshield compares to other setup tools: What installation product to use? InstallShield, WiX, Wise, Advanced Installer, etc
Learn about Wix:
Windows Installer and the creation of WiX
MSI vs nuget packages: which are is better for continuous delivery?
Newer answer on automation
I am very new to the installer world.
I have successfully made an .msi for my application and it is building with short-cuts and also uninstalls correctly.
My next goal is to package .Net 4.5 with the installer and have it be installed prior to the installation of my application.
I also have a third party application that needs to be installed. It is packaged as an msi.
From what I can gather I need to develop a Bootstraper solution to have these applications install in sequence.
Can anyone provide a guide as to how to implement an installer in such a way? My searches have come up with a bunch of partial implementations with an assumption of the design of a Wix Bootstrapper Project in Visual Studio.
I hope this helps someone. It took me 5 hours to figure it out. Maybe, my bad, but did not find anything about it in the docs or blogs.
So my scenario is: VS 2012, WIX 3.6 with Burn bootsrapper, create a Setup executable in order to check .NET Framework 4.5 and install it by downloading if not installed already. Sounds simple. And it is. Actually very.
Create your MSI installer project (WIX Setup Project), to produce an installer for your application.
Create a WIX Bootstrapper Project for your Setup executable.
Follow the instructions here, to create your Boundle.wxs
Add a reference to the WixNetFxExtension.dll which can be found in the WIX program directory.
Include the following line in your Chain:
<PackageGroupRef Id="NetFx45Redist"/>
Actually the WixNetFx extension contains a working install package definition for the .NET Framework 4.5.
As caveman_dick mentioned, Burn in WiX 3.6 supports this but you may also want to take a look at dotNetInstaller (http://dblock.github.com/dotnetinstaller/). We use it to install .NET 4.0 but I'm sure it works for installing 4.5 as well. It can also install other MSI dependencies very easily.
We want to create an .MSI package from a web deployment project in Visual Studio 2008.
Now we want to use continuous integration and we would need the .MSI package build in the nightly builds.
Till now we used standard Visual Studio Web Setup project, but this is not compatible with the MSBuild. So we decided to use WiX.
The problem is that I have not found any good tutorial/documentation about this.
Is there a way to do a WiX installer package from a web deployment project? If yes, how?
Also, I tried to use heat.exe to create the XML for the WiX project .wxs file, but it seems that heat.exe doesn't recognize the web deployment project format.
Thank you for your responses.
Regards,
V.
I wrote a blog post about this recently - http://www.chrissurfleet.co.uk/post/2011/07/01/Using-Packaged-Project-Output-in-WiX-and-Visual-Studio.aspx
In short, its fairly easy to use msbuild to package up your web app and then pass it to heat to generate your installer from.
Hope this helps.
You've probably long since found a solution for this, but to elaborate on Tom Cabanski's answer, you can invoke Visual Studio to build the msi on the command line using "devenv.com" via an external process from within your build. It's not a pretty as using msbuild, but it gets the job done. Below is an example of how to invoke Visual Studio:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.com" your.sln /build Release
Where your.sln is the solution file for the solution you wish to build, and Release is the configuration you wish to build, ensuring that the configuration you choose actually builds the vdproj project.
Following the successful execution, you can grab the msi from the appropriate configuration's bin, and do what you want with it.
I'd appreciate your response to this with your findings/approach, as I'm trying to decide whether to adopt WiX or InstallShield as the approach to building msi's for Web Applications within TFS Build, or to continue with the approach I just described. I haven't had to opportunity to try WiX out, and my very limited exposure to InstallShield suggests that this is far to involved for my need, which is to produce a simple deployment aid for some relatively straight-forward web applications to the company intranet via TFS Build.
We used WIX on the installers for our last couple of projects and ended up regretting it. I would stick with the VS built-in projects and just invoke the VS IDE from the command line in the CI build.
we are looking to automate an MSI generation for a product we are developing. Currently we have MSBuild building out the source to a network location, this is fine for testing but when it comes to releasing the software we will need to wrap it in an MSI.
The software is all .Net bar 1 COM component that will need registered on each machine it gets installed to.
What I was wondering was how to integrate Wix with MSBuild so that a new wix script will get generated along with an MSI that is able to handle fresh and upgrade installs.
Any help with this is very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Brendan
Sure, there are tasks in MS Build that can do all you need to build an MSI from WiX. Can you integrate this on a build / integration server?
Newer builds of Wix actually include a file called "wix.targets", which should get you started.
Also check out these fine articles on the topic:
Building with Wix.Targets (by Heath Stewart)
Wix Target for MSBuild (by Willem Meints)
Automate Releases With MSBuild And Windows Installer XML (by Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi) (Web archive link for archived msdn magazine)
They cover the topic in much more detail and are extremely helpful to get started.
You should download and install Votive. This will create a Visual Studio project file which you can use with MSBuild to create a WiX-based MSI.
There is also a topic in the WiX manual about how to integrate with MSBuild called Using WiX with MSBuild.