Hey Louis, Unfortunately this product takes the shape of most other open source projects. There is no formalized support because no one gets paid to do this work. The contributions and support are only as good as the community. I found this to be much the same as when I was using InstallShield as well. Although I paid for the support on a corporate license and I had many seats in my division (I was paying well over $30,000 a year to them (as my build environments and more products were coming through my team I was going to have to pay 1.2 million)) I still found it cheaper and more effective to move to WIX and hire consultants that knew the area or do the work myself. Again, this is a personal judgement call as I felt comfortable making the sales pitch to my Senior VP and CIO.
As for using WIX, version 3.0 requires the .NET 2.0 framework in order to run the different executables to build the MSI. However, the output (MSI) is the most compliant I have seen and does not require the .NET framework to execute on any system. The custom actions have all been written in C++ to support backwards compatibility. I am not sure of the tutorial that you are speaking about but it sounds out-of-date. There has been a lot of work put into the documentation in the WIX 3.0 toolset in order to improve that. I would suggest downloading a recent copy of the 3.0 binaries and looking into the doc folder to find the wix.chm file with schema documentation, how to guides and generized information. Thanks, Brian Rogers "Intelligence removes complexity." - Me http://icumove.spaces.live.com On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Louis elston <louels...@comcast.net>wrote: > >From the tutorial."This toolset requires .NET Framework 1.1 and its > Service > Pack", and "does not require any extra framework to be installed on the > target system". Why just framework 1.1, Why not a more recent version? > Are > there problems with WiX that might be eliminated if using a higher version > of the .NET Framework? Is it required that .Net Framework 1.1 be installed > on the target system? I may be wrong, but I believe that there are very > few > installers written today that do not require .NET Framework 2.0 or higher > (either for the installer requirements, or the product that is being > installed), so why not use the higher version of the .Net Framework? > > > > My experience is with InstallShield, where while some of my questions can > be > answered on the forums, not all of them are answered, and, not always in > the > time frame that is required to satisfy the requirements of getting my work > done on time, and the product out the door on time. If necessary, with a > support contract, I can usually get any of my questions answered (even if > it > is just to tell me that what I want to be done cannot be done). > > > > The tutorial (out of synch with the 2.0 examples), states that "there is a > relatively steep learning curve". It seems to me that (aside from the cost > of the tools such as InstallShield or Wise.and their support contracts), > that until there is the ability to get some kind of support, more current > learning material, books, etc., that if there is any kind of early deadline > as to getting the product and installer out the door, then the third party > tools are the way to go for the time being. > > > > Don't get me wrong, I am going to continue to try to muddle my way through > learning WiX as I believe that it will make me more marketable, but if > Microsoft wants this 'Free' product to take off, they should consider > helping it along a little. > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
