Neil, why does a bootstrapper mean you have to give up control? The latest
version of Office uses a bootstrapper to install a great many MSI packages to
actually take back complete control of the installation experience (for
example, one progress bar with no resets). It has extremely consistent look
and feel. Granted it took them a lot of work to accomplish that but you should
be able to get the same sort of experience.
The fundamental fact is that many installs are moving toward multi-package
installs. There are a number of reasons for it but the big ones come down to
the limitations around patching redistributables (i.e. lack of Merge Module
patching support) and multi-lingual installations. The problem for us on the
WiX toolset is that I'm 2 years behind execution on the bootstrapper platform I
wanted in the WiX toolset. I saw the need a long time ago when I created the
silly little bootstrapper that is part of the WiX toolset today but we need
something far more feature rich than that. Fortunately, Fredrik (of MSMQ and
COM+ fame) is working on it and based on his previous work, I'm pretty
confident it will provide a great starting point... when he gets done.
Finally, there is no WiX "philosophy" about the way you should handle your
dependencies. The WiX toolset should allow you to handle your dependencies how
you wish. Eventually, I hope we have an "out of box" experience for those that
desire (or need to handle) a multi-package experience. Right now, you just
have to write a lot more code (or use some other existing bootstrapper) to get
multi-package scenarios.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Neil Enns
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 18:27
To: Adam Majer; wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Installing .NET 3.5 redist?
The problem with option 1 is that it means we have to give up control of the
end-to-end install and out of box experience for our product. When you are
trying to construct a carefully designed user experience and impression of your
application, a bootstrapper is a pretty fugly addition to the mix. Contrast
that with our DirectX 9.0 install, which we can seamlessly fold into our
installer with no need for intervention by the user.
I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why the .NET team had to go with the
distribution solution they did. It just means our final experience winds up
being less than we'd hoped. Ah well.
Neil
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Adam Majer [EMAIL
PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 6:21 PM
To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Installing .NET 3.5 redist?
Christopher Painter wrote:
> The WiX `philosophy` seems to be don't add .NET dependencies to your
> install and don't redist the framework. Just do an AppSearch/Launch
> Condition and tell the user to go do it on their own. Personally
> this conflicts with my needs and results in one of the many reasons why
> I can't use WiX even though I'd like to.
The limitation is with Windows Installer, *not* WiX. The correct way of
doing this is either,
1. a bootstrapper that will check for MSI and install it if needed, or
2. just ship your MSI with the requirement condition and let the
destination deal with installing .NET 3.5.
For corporate deployments, #2 is probably best while option #1 is better
for the home user.
MSI is just a single-transaction-at-a-time installer. It is not like
Debian's APT that can install dozens if not more dependencies for you at
the same time as it installs or upgrades hundreds of other applications.
- Adam
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