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Closed 11 years ago.
Are there any books on WiX?
Yes! A Developers Guide to Windows Installer XML (I've got it, but haven't read it yet so can't comment on the quality of the book)
However I would first say, forget about WiX initially. Your concern is Windows Installer - WiX is simply a tool to define Windows Installer databases (MSI files). WiX is no different than many other products out there, except for the fact that it doesn't try to mask any Windows Installer concepts for you. InstallShield transparently does a bunch of things that Windows Installer doesn't support via custom actions and the like, WiX forces you to think more about the Windows Installer methodology and way of doing stuff. Windows Installer is what you want to understand, WiX comes afterwards.
Second, get a copy of The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to understand how Windows Installer (MSI) works.
Third, start with the first entry in the UAC in MSI blog posts and you should be able to get a better grip on things. Best documentation I ever read in trying to understand elevation, permissions and all the other stuff that goes with UAC.
Once you understand Windows Installer, WiX is extremely straightforward. It's just a new language to express the Windows Installer concepts - trying to learn them at the same time can get very confusing, but if you learn MSI first then WiX it's simple!
There is a book now: http://www.packtpub.com/article/getting-started-with-windows-installer-xml-wix.
Before you ask, no I have not read it. :)
I believe there is one in development called "The Wix Book", but right now I'm not sure any exist.
I usually point people towards this tutorial, it gives a good overview of the features and tools available:
http://www.tramontana.co.hu/wix/
There is also a quick introduction here:
http://ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/04/19/wix.html
I found a great WiX book on amazon recently and bought it. So far, very straightforward and useful.
http://www.amazon.com/WiX-Developers-Guide-Windows-Installer/dp/1849513724
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Closed 10 years ago.
Microsoft is moving away from the Visual Studio built-in MSI setup projects. WiX seems to be one alternative. But the tutorials I've found for WiX are all about five years old. For example, WiX: Hints for New Users (Part 1 of 3) is one from 2007.
Are there newer/better tutorials for WiX?
That article and others mention Votive as a way to create and edit WiX files.
Is Votive still an active project?
WixEdit claims to be the only active project for a WiX editor, but it isn't integrated into Visual Studio.
Should I use WixEdit or Votive?
Here's an answer I've posted before here. I'm not going to update it except to add Joy of Setup (from bob-arnson) and all the links in his blog sidebar will also be of use, less so in learning from scratch but very useful in knowing more once you get up to speed.
I dove into WiX about 4-5 years ago and it took me a good 6+ months before I felt I knew what I was doing and 12+ months to feel confident. There is a LOT that could be done to make it easier to get started from scratch - but the problem that most people don't realise is that if first you learn Windows Installer/MSI, then WiX is damn simple.
Go pick up a copy of The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer. I've lost count of how many times I've recommended it to people who are getting stuck on the concepts and are struggling to understand how Windows Installer works. Make sure you grab the Windows Installer SDK as well.
Getting to grasp with Windows Installer is the first stage of your learning, once that's sunk in you'll understand how InstallShield works (or doesn't work as the case may be..). Wise, InstallShield, etc try to shield you from the underlying concepts and have their own trickery/hacks to get around the limitations of Windows Installer.
Stage two (if you're serious about understanding Windows Installer) is learning WiX (The WiX Tutorial isn't too bad, although it's a bit out of date and targeted at WiX 2.0 rather than 3.0) and joining the wix-users mailing list. Don't join the users list until you've finished the book mentioned above, you'll be well in over your head. Questions from those who don't understand the Windows Installer concepts largely go ignored, however questions from people who have done their homework will find it a great resource.
What's not covered in the book is Vista, Robert Flamings blog entries on Understanding UAC and Vista (written when Vista was in it's beta stage) are the best information you'll find on the topic.
One thing that both the Windows Installer and WiX teams is really good at is keeping the documentation (Help files) up to date. Whenever I'm working on setups I'll generally have Wix.chm and Msi45.chm open on one monitor ;)
Along with the documentation, blogs from people on the WiX and Windows Installer teams are great for learning new tricks, etc. Far too many to list here, but once you know the terminology you'll find most of them popping up in google results.
If this all seems too much, then check out NSIS. Great for simple "I just need to copy files" type installations, not so great for enterprise deployments. If you're torn between the two then maybe go take a look at Rob Mensching's old blog when setup isn't just xcopy. Articles there are probably what convinced me that diving in and learning the underlying Windows Installer concepts would pay off in the long run. And it has :)
Update - since my original post, WiX: A Developers Guide to Windows Installer XML has been released and is also a good resource for beginners. (I didn't find it that great myself though.) I still suggest reading The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer as a starting point. Windows Installer and WiX isn't something you just pick up in a few days, it'll take a few months.
Download WiX and look at the tutorials in the manual (which is also installed as a .chm). When you install WiX, it will install the necessary files and templates so that it integrates nicely with Visual Studio.
Note: Every tool in WiX begins with a letter that helps signify its use. Votive is just the piece that integrates with Visual Studio.
Examples:
Votive = Visual Studio
Burn = Bootstrapper / Bundle
Candle = Compiler
Light = Linker
I used the book WiX: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML to get up to speed with WiX.
You can get Visual Studio integration from the WiX home at CodePlex.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Can you recommend a browser based IDE or programming editor ?
I feel like I've seen lots of these things drift past but when I look at my bookmarks I can only find two : http://cloud9ide.com/ and http://jsfiddle.net/
All languages are of interest (although non-JS particularly so).
I'd like to do a wide survey but don't include tools which are really just collaborative text editing - must be some sort of programming support built in (even if it's as bare bones as syntax colouring)
Thanks
Also I recommend you read this article: http://eclipse.dzone.com/news/who-needs-online-ide
It links and describes a lot of them, even more then those mentioned by others here.
edit: most of the ones describe in that article are dead.
Instead check out:
Full fledge IDEs:
ShiftEdit
Cloud9
PhpAnywhere
And something you can run on your own server: ACE
Actually, it looks like all online full fledged IDEs that I could find actually uses ACE at its core, and just add some nicer GUI over it and cloud support.
We've been building WIODE for some time now. Very stable release, easy install, and lots of features - [WIODE Browser Based IDE][1]
[1]: http://www.wiode.com/ "WIODE IDE"
UPDATE: WIODE has been replaced with a new project - Codiad
You missed...
jsbin.com
ideone.com
codepad.org
pastebin for PHP (good for testing PHP 5.3)
shameless plug for our solution, PythonAnywhere, which lets you code and run python apps in a browser... we also offer hosting for web apps, and our web-based console is fully functional, includes Bash for using git/hg/mercurial, Dropbox integration.
You can also code in other languages, although we don't have interpreters for everything, and you can currently only host Python webapps...
http://www.pythonanywhere.com
I've been working on one for a while that you might find interesting if you are looking for something you can install on your own server.
http://abstractionbuilder.com
It's free to use and it currently features some file management on your server, as well as real-time document editing with a nice preview.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I was taking a look on Go language, but I want to know if there is any IDE developed only for it, but that have a GUI design feature, as Visual Studio and Netbeans.
Go isn't really designed for GUIs - it's precisely designed to meet the kind of needs that Google has.
I dare say it's entirely possible to develop GUI frameworks with/in it, but it's not the team's priority as far as I'm aware.
You can also find an Eclipse plugin here: http://code.google.com/p/goclipse/
However, at the moment of writing this is still at an early development stage.
lite ide is little, cross platform and open source.you can try it.
http://code.google.com/p/golangide/
For my Go programming I use the Zeus editor. It's definitely NOT a Go GUI IDE but at least for me the gocode auto complete feature is great.
You can also use Notepad++ for now, there is a language file for it here:
http://go-lang.cat-v.org/text-editors/notepad-plus-plus/
I've been using gedit with C syntax highlighting selected and bash shell for compiling and testing. I keep the Linux version of Google Chrome browser running local copy of Go documentation. Under Xubuntu window manager I can flip the browser window up and down out of the title bar for whenever I need to look at package APIs.
Go compiles and links very fast - I'm just as productive with this set of tools as I've ever been using Java and C# IDEs. Kind of refreshing to write software with just "stone knives and bear skins".
Most of the main Go developers use Acme A programming environment by Rob Pike, it is very different from a traditional IDE, but if you are open-minded and get over the first shock, it can be extremely pleasant to use.
Use Cloud-IDE.com online editor and online deploy - All FREE !!
I believe the best options for developing Go are TextWrangler, Vim, or BBedit.
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Closed 11 years ago.
I know the blackberry has a custom IDE but if memory serves me it's quite a sub par IDE. Does anyone know if there's a different IDE out there for the device?
For 'native' BlackBerry app development (i.e. Java app development), there are basically 4 options:
RIM's JDE - pretty much a terrible
editor, but the most stable, most
feature-full (from a BlackBerry
perspective) solution.
RIM's JDE Plugin for Eclipse - you get all the
niceties of the Eclipse environment,
but there are a lot of problems.
Netbeans with the Mobility Pack - I haven't really seen anyone use this for a while, but a few developers swore by it a couple of
years ago
Custom Eclipse/JDE
environment - using ant scripts and
RIM's JDWP debugger interface (the component package section on that page). This
used to be the only way to go for
Eclipse development for BlackBerry
before the JDE Plugin
Options 3 and 4 I haven't seen used for a long time, not sure if they're still viable - though I don't see why #4 wouldn't be.
I used #4 for a long time, until RIM put out their plugin. While there are still a lot of problems with it, for me the productivity gains of working with something like Eclipse outweigh them.
So either 1 or 2, with the caveat that you should chose one or the other for your whole team, as they're really not compatible with each other (differences in project structure and how they handle resources). You can move from 1 to 2 easily, but not really the other way around.
The IDE provided by RIM is called the JDE. It is true that for many this product leaves much to be desired. RIM does support the use of Eclipse and Microsoft development environments as well so you can take your pick. Personally, I use the JDE. Don't construe this as a recommendation, I'm not saying it is the best, just what I use.
Aside from RIM's JDE, the only other option that I know of is RIM's JDE plugin for Eclipse.
The .NET plugin is very limited in what you can do, it doesn't give you much access to internal classes.
I've been using the JDE plugin and i've not encountered too many difficulties.
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Closed 6 years ago.
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I've given up trying to apply lipstick to the pigs of installers that come out of Visual Studio and have decided to look at WiX.
What resources would you recommend to learn and reference?
(Note - this is not a which-installer-technology-do-you-use question - it's specific to WiX.)
The WiX tutorial is the #1 resource
The people on the mailing list are very helpful
There's a The Code Project article, Creating an installer using Wix v3.0, Votive, and Visual Studio 2005/2008 - Part 2, the GUI that might help
Ther's a bunch of blogs, I keep bumping into Rob Mensching's (old).
Rob Mensching's new blog.
I haven't read WiX - Windows Installer XML (broken link), but I found it in my bookmarks
This code project tutorial outlines the bare minimum and builds up from there
One of the best ways I found to learn WiX was to take an existing MSI that did something I wanted to do, and used the Dark decompiler to generate a WiX script from it, and then I read that.
Apart from the links provided by people above, also have a look at the approach I use to explain this to people :
From first glance From MSI to WiX seems fairly comprehensive.
Even though it's not only related towards WiX, the book from Apress:
The Definitive guide to
Windows Installer
By Phil Wilson
link
It helped me to understand the installation processes. It's a good book to have when writing installers.
I have to add wix-users#lists.wixtoolset.org. That's where everyone hangs out and asks/answers questions as they come up. Just lurking on that mailing list will provide lots of real-time education on the WiX toolset.
Here's a shameless plug to the book I've recently published through Packt:
WiX: A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML
It covers a lot of what you'd need to know to get going using WiX 3.0.
If you understand German, then read the articles in the Entwickler Magazin, edition: 2008-05, 2008-06 and 2009-01.
A follow-up will be published in 2009-02, with more developing stuff (MSI API).
You may use link as a reference https://www.firegiant.com/wix/tutorial/
It won't help a beginner as it didn't provide any practical examples.
For a beginner, if you have a pluralsight subscription, there is a course which will teach you the basics.
'WIX-Cookbook' https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/wix-cookbook by Nick-Ramirez (Covers Wix-3.8). This is the book if anyone looking to get the job done quickly.
If you want to gain in-depth knowledge on how and why everything works, you probably better of going through Wix-3.6 A Developers Guide by the same author.
https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/wix-developers-guide-windows-installer-xml
To create an installer for websites, refer following series by Bart De Meyer
http://blog.bartdemeyer.be/2013/10/create-an-installer-for-website-with-wix-part-1/
This article will show you how to use Wix tools like Candle and Light.
I've written a tutorial that shows you how to create a WIX installer for a console application here, if you wanted a practical example.
Chiming in with another shameless plug; I recently wrote an article where I somewhat desperately try to explain some of the concepts of WiX in a more easily-understood way than the others. No offence.
http://www.optimalbpm.se/wiki/index.php/WiX
It is meant to be read before reading any tutorials, because it specifically tries to address some of the things people always seem to misunderstand as a result of well, reading those tutorials. And especially the documentation. At least I did.
Also, there is another article, a little bit more advanced, that has an angle to those distributing script(like Python etc)-based systems, and why one in not only those, but all cases should use Paraffin rather than Heat.
http://www.optimalbpm.se/wiki/index.php/Wix_and_scripting_languages