We are investigating replacing InstallShield InstallScript-based installs with Windows Installer-based installs. Many of our installs have prerequisites like .Net and some also chain several installers. In the absence of any external demands I would implement the basic installs as msi files and package them with an appropriate WiX bootstrapper. My problem is that some of our customers rely on Group Policy Objects (GPO's) to deploy software. GPO's cannot be used to deploy exe's. They require simple msi files. I have found three possible solutions to this and would like to solicit opinions and comments from the list about these alternatives.
1. Convince the customer to upgrade to a more capable deployment solution like SCCM that can deploy exe's. I understand that some customers may not be able to afford the money or the time required to make this change. Does anyone have some idea of ballpark costs and effort required to switch to a solution like SCCM? 2. Wrap the bootstrapper in an msi. I tried a few of the free tools available with varying success. The ones I tried either didn't work, weren't supported and/or produced what looked like an overly complex install when I decompiled the msi's using dark. There is also a WiX project at http://antipatterns.blogspot.ca/2012/03/wix-project-to-wrap-exe-installer.html which looked promising that I haven't tried yet. My biggest problem with this approach is that you end up with an extra install for each wrapper and essentially double the number of installers that you need to build and maintain. It is also not clear to me how prerequisites like .Net or a Windows Installer upgrade could be pushed to sites using GPO's unless we provided wrappers for those as well (more work). Am I making this solution sound worse than it is? 3. Build bootstrappers as required but make the msi files available as well, along with instructions about prerequisites and how to order the installs and set common properties. While this approach has some appeal in giving the customer's IT department a lot of flexibility it also means that we have to expose and document the installer logic and keep it up-to-date. We also have to release the msi's separately. I'm not clear how the customer would deal with exe based prerequisite packages like .Net with this approach. Is there a better alternative that I missed? Note that I've already excluded tools that builds msi's based on snapshot differences. Any suggestions will be appreciated. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
