> Maybe what I'm proposing is not a good use. But maybe you
> don't understand the context of the unique kind of software
> family I'm trying to install. How could you understand?
>
> Sometimes there are good solutions that are different from
> what the designer of a tool might have planned. Sometimes
> there are just bad solutions. It's ultimately up to me.
>
> I appreciate the free, friendly advice, but I had a hard
> time getting a simple answer. The response could have been
> "Yes, here's how to do it, but I don't recommend".
>
> You mentioned self-extracting .exe tools. Are you referring to
> just a self-extracting zip exe? Or are there such tools that
> might also set up shortcuts, display a user agreement, and
> have an attractive appearance? Anything you could point me to?
You probably already have one. Iexpress.exe is part of Internet
Explorer and it will bundle up a bunch of files into a self extracting
executable. Just run iexpress.exe.
Windows Installer does a lot of good things and WiX is, by far, the best
thing I've seen for creating Windows Installers but, if you don't want
the things that windows installer provides, then WiX is not much fun.
To do a UI in WiX, you basically have to hand edit XML that describes
the dialogs. You have to lay things out pixel by pixel (or dialog unit
by dialog unit, I don't know).
If I were in your shoes, I would write a Winforms app in C# (or VB.Net)
to do the install. You can use the classes in the System.IO.Compression
namespace to unzip your files. Creating a GUI is a lot easier in C#.
Even running an external zip is easier, running unzip via WiX would be
something like:
<CustomAction
Id="SetUnzipProp"
Property="UnzipProp"
Value="UNZIP "[#YOURZIPFILEID]""/>
<Property Id="QtExecCmdTimeout" Value="6000000"/>
<CustomAction
Id="UnzipProp"
BinaryKey="wixca"
DllEntry="CAQuietExec"
Execute="deferred"
Impersonate="yes"
Return="check"/>
<Binary Id="wixca" src="wixca.dll"/>
And, in C# it would be:
Process.Start("UNZIP.EXE", "YOURZIPFILE.ZIP");
You might also consider a combination (which is what we do). We use WiX
to create Windows Installers that install various parts of our
application. We then wrote a C# app that does the installation GUI and
checks things like SQL server and MSMQ and decides what parts of our app
need to be installed then it installs our MSIs. We then use
iexpress.exe to bundle it all together.
John Vottero
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