All, First -- I'm new to the list, so, nice to meet you.
My question, in a nutshell, is what is the best way to go about dealing with this situation I have? The situation its, that I've got a bunch of tools which are related to each other as part of a software platform. They are all various utilities, and each one currently has it's own MSI installer. I want to package a bunch of them up into a single MSI with each install as a feature in that MSI. The overall goal is to be able to flexibly deploy the tools in various groups. The first step is to make one big installer with lots of features, then in the future make various packages with certain subsets of the tools. Each tool will be independently updated, and versioned, sometimes needing to be installed individually, sometimes as part of a package. When installed as a package, they may need to be updated individually, as part of that package... So, that's the problem... If I were starting fresh, writing it from the ground up in WiX, I know enough about it to include each program's install as it's own feature, and put it all together in the a big package. I think I understand enough about fragments that I could keep each "highest level" fragment (ie, each top level feature/seperate program install), in it's own fragement file, then have one wxs file that has a the big package, and a wxs file for each seperate package, then build them all at the same time... That doesnt' quite seem like what I want to do though. I'm not completely clear on merge modules and how those work, but I imagine that's what I want to do here. Would I want to compile each current installer to a MSP, instead of an MSI, then some how link each MSP in as a feature in a big package? Can that be done? If so, how do I convert the MSI to a MSP without completely decompiling it with dark? Would I be better served to just re-create the installs in WiX (the MSIs were made with either .Net Setup projects or an old version of InstallShield) as merge module projects, generating the MSPs up-front? What would a package that used MSPs as features look like? Sorry if my message is lengthy and showing my obvious lack of experience with this matter. I promise to pay attention and learn from your responses, so that I can get back to work cleaning up our company's installer mess, instead of sending lengthy emails to mailing-lists. Thanks, Troy ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
