Other Software > Developer's Corner

WiX Installer - not really a review

(1/4) > >>

wraith808:
So, in a former life, my title at a company was 'Configuration Engineer'.  What that meant at that particular company was that I did the work that developers didn't want to do, i.e burning CDs/DVDs, Maintaining version control systems, and writing installers.  Since writing installers at the time was painful, once I paid my dues in that position, I didn't want to write installers anymore.  All of my software has been zip it up, and let the user unzip it.  If I needed something done, I did it on first run.

I decided that for my latest effort, I wanted to get back into writing installers.  I still have my old unzip it mentality and have a distribution just in a zip file, but I also wrote an installer.  I looked at a few of the ones I remembered: NSIS (development stalled), Wise (discontinued), InstallAware (way too expensive), InstallShield (ditto)... I was about to go with Inno Setup, but then I saw WiX - Windows Installer XML.  I was somewhat skeptical of an XML based installer system, but decided to try it.

After downloading and installing, I used a tutorial.  I didn't walk through using their sample, but instead tried my own software.  It was a pain putting in entries for all of the files that I used manually.  But, I have to admit, it was pretty straightforward.  Within an hour, I had an installer- but no UI.  Then I found out that adding the UI was pretty painless.  The came the realization that it had installed into Visual studio- and I could create a project for it from the IDE.  I was glad to have learned everything behind the compiler and linker- but that made it a lot easier.

I'd give WiX a thumbs up to anyone looking to make an installer- and a thumbs way up for anyone using Visual studio and needing to make an installer.  It was straightforward, and just works!

Renegade:
Hmmm... Looks about the same as the last I checked it.

Is there any compelling reason to use it over Inno Setup or the VS setup project?

What I would REALLY like is a cross platform installer that is somewhat sane. And free. I don't have $2,500 or whatever just waiting to burn on an install-builder. :( Sigh...

Got any recommendations? Seems like you've been around the block a few times with installers. :D

wraith808:
What I look for in an installer is (a) control, and (b) ease of use.

I don't like the VS Setup projects because of a lack of control.  It makes a lot of assumptions for you, and wants you to install the windows way.  Inno setup is pretty easy to use- but I don't like it because of the use of yet another tool.  That's why I liked WiX- it was easy to use, and I had control.  Basically, all I wanted to do was show a license, get a path, and do an xcopy.  The only thing that would have hit it out the park for me is if you could point it to a directory structure and it grab all of the files.  But copying and pasting one line for each file was trivial, if mind-numbing.  And it's in the same solution as the rest of my solution, and I can just build it from VS after I build my solution.  If I had more requirements for an installer, it might be a different story.  But not having advanced requirements, it was just enough for me.

Inno Setup is good.  NSIS was also.  And I'd recommend either (as NSIS is still useful as of now... but I'd go with Inno because of the fact that it's in development).  There are a few that have free options for commercial installers- but I haven't actually used any of them.  With them being at heart commercial, I figured I'd stay away, not wanting to be in the midst of using it when they decided to no longer support the free version.

Ath:
Is there any compelling reason to use it over Inno Setup or the VS setup project?
-Renegade (September 23, 2012, 12:15 AM)
--- End quote ---
That's easy, don't ever use VS setup project! It's so stupid, that an update requires you to un-install before you can update. And the lack of control that wraith808 mentions.

Inno Setup is a good choice for anything that's either created with VS or not with VS, if you work in VS exclusively, then WiX is a good alternative to Inno Setup (but I'm a bit biased about Inno Setup as I've been using that for 13 years now...)

There is a VS plugin for Inno Setup (or used to be, not sure and not really interested), as I use one of the 3rd party IDE's for all my Inno Setup projects.

wraith808:
I formerly used Inno Setup years ago, and it was quite good.  I was just incredibly impressed by the integration of WiX into VS, and how transparent and straightforward it was.  Again, the need to put the files in manually is incredibly mind numbing and I'm surprised there's not a VS extension to take that pain away.  Then again... I didn't look.  Hmm...

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page