It seems to me reading this from a link via Christopher Painter that you guys are all missing a few vital points.
It looks to me like most of you looking at this as Dev's which is where you are going wrong. I agree these items should be trivial to fix but there is a vast number of regions outside of the development sphere which are the reason it is not. I feel some of you need to take your blinkers off and see what is really the big picture here. Windows Installer is complex it is difficult to get decent information on but there are very valid reasons why its so difficult and most of them extend outside the realm of the developer developing a piece of software for his single little machine. Windows Installer caters for a massive array of issues problems operating systems, and integrates the entire setup not only for your little application but is designed to integrate hundred/thousands of applications developed by hundreds/thousands of developers onto multiple platforms. There is a much bigger picture at work here. I think the guys at MS have done a great job. I could say vbscript is a great programming language and that C# or F# is crap when the reality is my understanding of them may not be as good as some of you guys here. Most of you would look at me like I was mental or something but the reality is many of you are looking at this with the same mentality. I have been using windows installer since its inception and these days I find little that it cant do with a tiny bit of brute force. Don't blame the tools as there are plenty of people out there using these tools and making them work seemlessly and quickly on a day to day basis. Each day I integrate around 1,000,000 lines of code into multiple msi's within minutes using WiX. (I couldnt care less what its written in, if you know how to use it as it was designed it works like a charm). If anyone would like some assistance understanding the finer intricacies of windows installer I have some heavy detail on most of the undocumented features here. http://john.mcfadyen.spaces.live.com No offence intended to anyone on these boards, this post is not aimed at being nasty and I hope my blog can aid with some of your troubles. Scott Palmer-3 wrote: > > On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Josh Rowe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > >> <snip> >> >> The moral of the story is that deployment procedures really are part of >> the source code for an application. They are also risky, so implement >> them >> first to minimize risk. >> > > This is the problem. Deployment SHOULD be trivial. That it is a "risky" > part is outrageous. Shouldn't the hard part be in your application's > algorithms rather than how to install it? (Your statement also ignores > the > fact that there is risk in other parts of the development - should those > parts also be done first to minimize risk? :-) ) > > Saying it's risky is fine to justify the point that installers should be > dealt with sooner in the development process - Given the current state of > installer technology I must sadly agree. But it belittles the fact that > the > installer technology sucks so bad and is the root problem that needs > fixing. Am I the only one that thinks it is somewhat pathetic to not > consider a certain technology for the development of my application > because > I wont' be able to write the installer? Doesn't that just say that A: the > technology to be installed (e.g. COM+), and B: the installer technology > itself (e.g. MSI) both suck? > > On a Mac you would just drag and drop the application icon. The very > existence of an installer is frowned upon for most things. Why doesn't > Microsoft rip-off that instead of the desktop eye-candy? :-) > > Isn't the goal of WiX to make creating MSI easier without giving up any of > it's raw abilities? Should we really have to worry at the WiX level about > naming icon Ids with extensions that match what shortcuts that use them > point to? That is just plain dumb and WiX should deal with that behind > the > scenes for us. Just like it deals with the insane requirement for 8.3 > filenames (WiX V3). Should I have to hack the component keys when I want > to > use shortcuts in a simple install for ALL_USERS? No, WiX should handle > that > too. > > Regards, > > Scott > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft > Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. > http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > > -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/yep---back-to-being-100--frustrated-tp17181242p17247075.html Sent from the wix-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
