Sounds very useful Tomasz. I was in the process of writing something very similar last summer before a major release to for that release & all subsequent release installations. Up until that release we didn't require any version of .NET, just the VC++ 2005 redistributable controls. As we now needed .NET 2.0 for our application I had the same idea as yourself, bootstrap the .NET 2.0 redistributable for those few Windows XP systems which don't already have it & then run my C# .NET 2.0 installer GUI to give the user a rich installation experience. I unfortunately ran out of time & decided on using dblock's dotnetinstaller to install the pre-requisites (.NET 2.0 & VC++ 2005 redist) as well as sequencing my WiX generated MSI's & MSP's.
Will definitely take a look at SharpSetup when I get some development time free to look into this again. Thanks for making this available to us =) 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: Tomasz Grobelny [mailto:tom...@grobelny.oswiecenia.net] Sent: 14 May 2010 23:53 To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Finally a GUI solution with WiX Dnia piątek 14 maj 2010 o 02:00:13 dB. napisał(a): > I played with SharpSetup for an hour. I see some value, especially > getting started, but these neatly integrated things often end up being > more of a drag and time saved upfront has a very long tail. > Thanks for your feedback. I tried to write SharpSetup in such a way that it doesn't get (too much) into your way, but still provide features WiX itself cannot provide (eg. language selection) or is not very good at (GUI). If you have any more specific comments please let me know (either on the list or in private). > I think it's an interesting idea that the Wix GUI editor is actually a > form editor that uses c# code as a back-end. Then I assume it compiles > into wix. Looks clever. > No, there is no translation into WiX phase (while I cannot rule out that it would be possible, I think it would be error-prone and limiting). The final installer simply consists of 3 main parts: bootstrapper (written in C++), WinForms GUI (written in C#, one could try VB/WPF combination) and MSI file (written in WiX). So the installer requires .NET Framework at runtime. This in turn means that SharpSetup is not suitable for every application, but if the application or one of its prerequsites requires .NET 2.0 then there is no reason not to use power of .NET at installation time. In that respect situation is the same as with C# Custom Actions. > I am particularly not excited by the bootstrapper in SharpSetup. > Having contributed to a large set of features in dotnetinstaller for > over a year now I think that the effort required to build a really > good bootstrapper is extremely large. A good bootstrapper for MSIs > should host them and drive their execution with unified progress, ways > to ask questions once and apply the answers to multiple installers, > etc. My favorite bootstrapper is SQL Server 2005 or 2008. Sounds like > burn will be "it", albeit in a while. > Certainly a lot of features are missing - that's why this is version 1.0 - working, usable for real world installers, but not (yet) perfect. But I think that at least part of your disappointment may come from the fact that dotnetInstaller and bootstrapper in SharpSetup have different goals. dotnetInstaller is for example supposed to install MDAC and IE (from dotnetInstaller web site). I do not plan for SharpSetup bootstrapper to be used for such tasks. The main task of SharpSetup bootstrapper is to start main GUI written in C#. That means that we only need to check for Windows Installer 3.1 and .NET 2.0. Rest of your application prerequisites may be installed in main GUI. Of course this may change (as any other design decision) but this is how I view things with regard to bootstrapper currently. > All the above worth about 0.02c :) > Still quite valuable as both WiX and SharpSetup are for free :-) -- Regards, Tomasz Grobelny ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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
