I'm slowly making progress on a new tool for the WiX toolset called "burn"
(see:
http://robmensching.com/blog/archive/2007/04/10/WiX-v3-Roadmap-Draft.aspx). It
is a generic bootstrapper that will eventually handle the things you list
below. It's slow going and not really anything in a state to share yet. If
only I could sleep less... <smile/>
Anyway, that's where I'm moving towards. The existing setupexe project is as
limited as you point out.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Hewes
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 1:36 PM
To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [WiX-users] Building a setup.exe
I've been working on building an installer using Wix. Building an msi seems to
work well and I have no major problem. But where I'm getting bogged down is in
the things surrounding it, such as the setup.exe program. I have a couple of
questions.
1. I've noticed the setupbld.exe utility and I've tried it. It seems to create
a setup.exe with all files packed into a single EXE, which are then extracted
at runtime. That's good. But in addition to that, I also need a setup.exe that
will launch loose, uncompressed files for installation from a CD. Can it
currently do that as well?
2. This isn't so much a question as a feature request. I need for to the
setup.exe to show a language selection dialog to allow the user to select an
installation language (like Installshield does). I think I will probably try to
add it myself to the setupexe project if it never gets added by the Wix guys.
3. I read about chaining as a way of handling more than one installation. I
currently have this requirement, since I need to install a driver and also an
application that works with the product. For various reasons, it's better for
us not to package these in the same installer. But chaining doesn't seem like
an ideal solution either---I think that automatically launching one installer
after another can be confusing to the end user.
I think a better solution, at least for CD installation, is to begin with a
menu. The menu allows the user to choose what to install; that is, which
installer to run. The menu can list the device installer and the application
installer. It can also allow users to optionally install things like Adobe
Reader if your documentation is in PDF form. I've seen some products that do
this and they have graphically pretty menu programs.
Unfortunately, in doing a search, I didn't find any decent existing software
for developing such a menu program. Can anyone recommend something? Sure,
perhaps it's really just a dialog with buttons, so you can probably write one
yourself (I'm a C++ programmer). But I was hoping to find something that
included some pre-designed fancy graphics, and allowed you to slap together a
menu launcher in an hour or so with no programming. Does this make sense? Or am
I thinking in the wrong direction?
Although I like the feeling of working "close to the metal" with Wix as
compared to some commercial product like InstallShield, I also seem to be
getting slowed by the setup.exe issues outside of the actual msi more than
anything.
Thanks for any comments.
Jim
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop.
Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/
_______________________________________________
WiX-users mailing list
WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
