I would like to deploy a SharePoint 2010 solution package (wsp) using MSI (or some other user friendly form of installer).
I know I can create a custom action and deploy everything using the SharePoint object model, but I don't think that's the way to go.
What would be the way to do this?
There is an upcoming project on it, read about it here:
http://sharepointinstaller.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=SpecificationV2&referringTitle=Home
Currently, the best way would be to use MSI with CustomAction. But instead of object model, use powershell script to deploy the WSP. It will much cleaner than code.
http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2009/12/02/adding-and-deploying-solutions-with-powershell-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx
Related
We use InstallShield InstallScript projects to create our installers and are looking for a good way to migrate to the WiX Toolset. As far as I know there is no UpgradeCode (as for MSI) to update from an Installshield InstallScript project to a WiX project.
The only solution I found so far is:
manually save configurations
uninstall the InstallScript installation completely
install the WiX installation
apply the saved configurations
Is there a better way?
Ok after all those comments I think I understand why this is such an issue. Unfortunately I don't think there is a very simple way to do waht you want to do.
I think your method will be the only real way to migrate from this isntallscript setup based installation. There should be some registry entry in HKLM/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Uninstall that relates to your product. In here there may be a uninstall command which you could read into a Variable from your burn package and pass that value as a property to your msi.
In you MSI you can have 3 custom actions specifically related to upgrading from the installshield product installation. All these tasks should be deferred custom actions so that they can run with administrator elevation. The first task should copy all the configuration settings to a safe place (generally %temp%\ProductConfig\ would be fine). The second part after saving the configuration would run that uninstall command to remove the product, you may need to append /q or something to make it run passively/quietly. Then at the end of the installation you can copy back the configuration files from temp.
Each of the custom actions should run conditionally on whether or not the property you passed in is set to something. I would schedule the copy cofig after InstallInitialize, the uninstall after the copy and the restore before InstallFinalize just to ensure that everything is copied over after the installer puts all the files on the system.
Ideally you would like to get everything to upgrade without the user needing to interact except in a minimal way by clicking next and Install.
I've only dealt with InstallShield enough to know I really don't like it so if someone else knows more and knows of a better way to do it they'll hopefully chime in.
Orca clearly showing Custom action type 23 - Nested Installation
Inspecting in Visual Studio shows no custom actions at all...
As part of an update on the MSI I'm working on, one of the tasks is to remove the nested installation, as it is a deprecated method.
I can't seem to find where this SQL2000.msi is coming from
I can't find a way to remove it
Any time I build the MSI the custom actions will be there. It's not good enough to edit the MSI after it has been built, it must be built correctly initially.
What possible ways could the MSI be pulling SQL2000 into the MSI?
I can't seem to find it anywhere on my computer.
You should say what is (or was) being used to build this install because it's not clear where Visual Studio setup projects are involved (your custom action view). To my knowledge, Visual Studio has never generated type 23 custom actions. So if you are using a VS setup project to build this project, then the only place it can come from is a merge module, so it should be in the imported merge modules. It's probably an MSDE merge module.
The screenshot of Orca and the custom actions has the format that shows they are from a merge module - the custom action name and then the merge module package code, so the MSM you're looking for is the one with packagecode starting A95D...
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'm developing a Windows service in VS2012 and the setup/deployment part has been removed. So I'm not able to create a setup project. I would like to hear what you guys could recommend for a good easy to use the installer. I need to take some inputs, only strings, under the installation of the service. I've been looking at WiX but that seems a bit complex, and I only got 1 or 2 days to make this installer.
So what installer should I use other than Wix?
I've had really bad experiences with InstallShield LE (the one that comes with Visual Studio 2012), especially for Windows Services. The features that you need to install a service (custom actions, etc), don't come with the light version.
What I'm planning to do for the current Windows service I'm working on is to build it with Topshelf, which (amongst other things) means installing your service is as simple as running MyServiceApp.exe install. I'm sure even InstallShield will let you run your app once it's installed, and then your app/Topshelf can install the service component.
If InstallShield doesn't work for you, I've had good results before with NSIS. Simple, powerful, free, decent documentation. It looks a bit clunky.
Here is a list of setup tools which can get you started:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software
If you don't have a lot of time for creating the installer, I recommend using a commercial tool like Advanced Installer or InstallShield. You need a license, but they are focused on usability (do more in less time).
You can do it with InstallShield LE... You can add custom actions "After Register Product" for install and for "After System Changes". These custom actions can run an EXE on the machine.
Make sure you run the command line tools "in system context"
After Register Product run the version of InstallUtil to your version of .NET
eg.
path=C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319
command=InstallUtil.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\XXX\YYY\ZZZ.exe"
replacing XXX YYY and ZZZ to match your install
After System Changes to delete your service name run
e.g.
sc delete "servicename"
Note you need support for the custom actions within your own service executable (you needed this in earlier VS too).
You can find more information about SC here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/251192
To add an installer for a service, you just need to right-click on the designer for the service and click "Add Installer".
Here's the walkthrough:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zt39148a.aspx
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.