Hi Unfortunately there seems to be some misunderstanding from Mozilla's part about msi packages (and Windows Installer) and why many customers have for over ten years expressed their desire to get msi packages straight from Mozilla. Providing an msi wrapper as a solution quite misses the point. It is a start, however, and you must start from somewhere.
If Mozilla is going to provide msi packages of their products the whole process must be seamlessly integrated into the automated build process. Every single resource, like files and registry settings, must belong into a one and only one Windows Installer component, which will be part of Windows Installer features, which eventually define and will be part of the msi package. This authoring job and maintenance of the msi structure along with the code must be done by Mozilla, who owns the code. Moving towards msi packages and Windows Installer technology would be a huge step. A lot of things must change compared to the current packaging model. You cannot, for example, have both exe installer and msi package touch the same files and resources. If msi packages come then setup.exe's must go (or there must be some very clever detection logic in both to prevent damages). Do not think this as a repackaging process which happens after build, because then you are on a completely wrong track and you will never reach your destination. Another essential part closely related to the packaging and deployment in managed enterprise environments is (pre)configuring all kinds of settings. It would be just awesome if some of the settings or defaults would be possible to configure using mst file where one could define desired Windows Installer Properties which write settings in Windows registry which Firefox uses (instead of number of .js files). After that a natural step would be a group policy support and providing custom .admx and .adml files. What comes to the centralized settings management there is quite a long way until Mozilla is anywhere even close where PolicyPak's PolicyPak for Mozilla Firefox is today. This whole thing is mostly about a question whether or not Mozilla is interested in getting larger installation base for Firefox in big companies, businesses, enterprises, schools, etc. Best regards, -- Mikko Järvinen From: Enterprise [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gustafsson Martin (SEIT) Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 10:06 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Mozilla Enterprise] Request for feedback: a MSI installer of Firefox Hi Ledru! I just did a quick check of the MSI and, with all due respect, custom action wrapping an .exe-file in to an MSI with a silent switch is not really something that makes anyones life easier from an enterprise perspective. The strengths of an MSI comes from the different database tables inside that can be manipulated with transforms files so that we can build from a base package. A tip is to look at the FrontMotion MSI:s to get an idea of what they should look like when a repackaged .exe is done properly (http://www.frontmotion.com/news/firefoxesr/releases/firefoxesr-52-3-0/). Not sure if they are building MSI:s directly from your build scripts as they look very neat and tidy :D Mvh Martin Gustafsson From: Enterprise [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sylvestre Ledru Sent: den 16 augusti 2017 18:43 To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; Romain Testard <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; Michael Kaply <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: [Mozilla Enterprise] Request for feedback: a MSI installer of Firefox Hello, Thanks to all the answers to the survey that we received, we have decided to investigate what a Firefox MSI installer could look like. We made a simple MSI wrapper of Firefox 52.2.0 installer. It is available on this URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9mXnKFQuivXd19YT1NhNHpVRkk/view sha256: e9b31370ee13ffd74d5cb14143aa49aff353dac7d6fe707eb53460fc7482aa31 Now, we would appreciate your feedback on this implementation. Please use this form to tell us what you think: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSevoDXIWq4d5vbBR41rQSNhZiInw2CNqYBwQUbnlj1xP5wEdw/viewform Please note that this is a proof of concept and that should not be used in production. Thanks, Sylvestre The information contained in this e-mail message may be privileged, confidential, and protected from disclosure. Any unauthorized use, printing, copying, disclosure or dissemination of this communication may be subject to legal restriction or sanction. If you think that you have received this e-mail message in error, please reply to the sender and delete this message from your computer.
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