Hello, Here's the way our process currently looks like: - We build and ship the main product installer as an MSI, Installshield based project. I am talking about a 900MB product, comprising of about 15.000 files and 2300 folders, so we use Installshield's "Dynamic linking" feature extensively. (Basically, you point to a folder, and components will be generated on the fly at build time, one component per directory; the ComponentIDs will of course change on every rebuild) Needless to say, we don't subscribe to the MSI/WiX philosophy of having developers maintain the installer components; I receive one big zip file, and must deliver an installer. While I have nothing against changing this state of facts, I don't think it will change soon. - When new chips are introduced, we must deliver a "Service pack" that will offer compiling/debugging support for it. The patch will generally add new files to the installation, and sometimes update existing files, always in a backwards-compatible manner. Since customers will download only the patch offering support for the device they are working with, these patches can be applied more or less in any order. Currently, these patches are built using the NullSoft installer. As a first step, I'd like to get rid of NullSoft, and replace it with WiX; on the long run, a full transition to WiX could be an interesting option. I don't understand how I can use MSI's own patching support: it seems to impose a linear evolution of the product, with a well defined sequence of applying patches - and by all means, do correct me if I'm wrong. My first impulse is to integrate something like tallow/paraffin in the patch build system, and generate service packs as standalone installers with 1 component/file (performance of patches is not really critical, they are quite small). Coupled with Installshield's dynamic linking, this is bound to break the component rules in a systematic manner. Also, there's the open issue of uninstalling these patches when the main product is uninstalled.
Can you provide some pointers on the best way to proceed ? Thank you ! -- Stelian ENE Installer Engineer, DevTech Freescale Semiconductor Work: +40 21 305 2064 Mobile: +40 728 052 499 This e-mail, and any associated attachments have been classified as: [X] Public [ ] Freescale Semiconductor Internal Use Only [ ] Freescale Semiconductor Confidential Proprietary ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
