Thank you everyone for your input and advice. I'm going to pursue a Bootstrapper approach and it would actually solve a minor problem we have of making sure all other prerequisites our product has are installed on the customers computer as well. I'll simply treat our product A a prerequisite to installing our product B.
Much appreciated! Cody -----Original Message----- From: Pally Sandher [mailto:pally.sand...@iesve.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 10:34 AM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Need to install 2 products at once If you want your users to do the work you could use a simple LaunchCondition in Product B which checks something that indicates Product A is installed before it will allow installation of Product B. However if you want automation with separate packages you're going to have to bundle Product B with a bootstrapper which does the Product A checking logic & acts accordingly. If you want to cater to users who don't have an internet connection in that scenario you'll need to bundle both products along with the bootstrapper. You're right about using merge modules (or wixlibs) in that it won't show Product A as being installed in the ARP list when Product B is if implemented using merge modules (or wixlibs). You wouldn't need to maintain 2 actual installers if you go the merge module (or wixlib) route as the one to install Product A is going to be a skeleton which just installs the merge module (or wixlib) contents. You'd have to decide whether this is a problem for you or not (it wouldn't be for me but I'm quite comfortable with the Component Rules). Rob M wrote a pretty good article on WixLibs if you're interested at http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2008/10/10/What-are-.wixlibs-and-why- would-you-use-them Personally if I weren't using merge modules (or wixlibs) I'd add the LaunchCondition in Product B & then use dotnetinstaller (http://dotnetinstaller.codeplex.com) to create a package containing both MSI's which installs Product A then Product B. This should handle any sys-admins who extract the MSI's from your package & attempt to deploy just Product B on it's own (LaunchConditions are evaluated first so they should see the error dialog instantly if they try to push Product B to their users machines). Concurrent installation wasn't replaced by anything. It's extremely dangerous but from what I've read on MSDN it's still technically possible. I would strongly advise you not to even consider attempting it though. Good luck. Palbinder Sandher Software Deployment & IT Administrator T: +44 (0) 141 945 8500 F: +44 (0) 141 945 8501 http://www.iesve.com **Design, Simulate + Innovate with the <Virtual Environment>** Integrated Environmental Solutions Limited. Registered in Scotland No. SC151456 Registered Office - Helix Building, West Of Scotland Science Park, Glasgow G20 0SP Email Disclaimer -----Original Message----- From: Ryan O'Neill [mailto:r...@ryanoneill.com] Sent: 26 January 2010 15:27 To: 'General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.' Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Need to install 2 products at once Personally, I'd recommend a bootstrapper using the msbuild GenerateBootstrapper task. I've got to go to a meeting now, but if you have any questions about that approach feel free to ask and I'll pick up later. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: Cody Gibson [mailto:cgib...@artoftest.com] Sent: 26 January 2010 15:02 To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: [WiX-users] Need to install 2 products at once Here's my problem: We offer 2 products to our customers. Product A works standalone. Product B relies on product A. Both products are owned by us (meaning we have total control of the source code and the installers). I am responsible for the installers. Currently both ship as .MSI's which are built using WiX. What I'm looking for is some way of having product A automatically installed (with default settings) when the customer goes to install product B. I haven't found a good solution for installing 2 .MSI's at once. According to Windows Installer documentation this is called Concurrent Installation, which is a deprecated, no longer supported feature. I haven't seen in their documentation an explicit statement saying what they replaced it with. Surely someone else has dealt with this type of problem. How did you solve it? Do recommend using Merge Modules? A bootstrapper? Or what? Both products are downloadable from our website. Is there a nice way to use that to our advantage here (though we still have to deal with customers who have machines that are not Internet accessible)? I'm not real keen of the idea of creating a merge module because that would mean I'm basically maintaining two installers for product A, one .MSI for public release and one .MSM just to be included into product B's .MSI. Another drawback I see to using a merge module (it appears I haven't actually tried it yet) is that it would end up showing only product B being installed in the Programs & Features (aka Add/Remove Programs) list instead of both products. I'm open to ideas please. Thanks, Cody ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- -- The Planet: dedicated and managed hosting, cloud storage, colocation Stay online with enterprise data centers and the best network in the business Choose flexible plans and management services without long-term contracts Personal 24x7 support from experience hosting pros just a phone call away. http://p.sf.net/sfu/theplanet-com _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ The Planet: dedicated and managed hosting, cloud storage, colocation Stay online with enterprise data centers and the best network in the business Choose flexible plans and management services without long-term contracts Personal 24x7 support from experience hosting pros just a phone call away. http://p.sf.net/sfu/theplanet-com _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Planet: dedicated and managed hosting, cloud storage, colocation Stay online with enterprise data centers and the best network in the business Choose flexible plans and management services without long-term contracts Personal 24x7 support from experience hosting pros just a phone call away. http://p.sf.net/sfu/theplanet-com _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Planet: dedicated and managed hosting, cloud storage, colocation Stay online with enterprise data centers and the best network in the business Choose flexible plans and management services without long-term contracts Personal 24x7 support from experience hosting pros just a phone call away. http://p.sf.net/sfu/theplanet-com _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
