Hi, - Wix based on Windows installation technology(msi), which is controlled/managed by windows installer service. - Its Microsoft recommended installer building software which has built in support in windows. NSIS is not more than a wrapper over scripting language where as WIX/MSI is specifically designed to write installer for windows. - MSI installer files are simply database files, where as NSIS based installers are binary executable. Wix/msi based installer will support automatic rollback, uninstall, logging etc, where as in NSIS you have to write scripts for everything. - Various services like WMI, has built in support of MSI based installer, where as for NSIS based installer will be treated as a simple executable in it. - Microsoft visual studio has support of WIX toolkit, which makes development easy. - As your installer grow it becomes difficult to manage it using NSIS.
We have initially NSIS based installer which was migrated to WIX after some time. MSI based installers are future of windows installation technology. Regards, Sanjay Rao On 4/17/2013 6:32 PM, Nick Miller wrote: > Hey guys, thank you for all of your great responses. Allow me to > provide a little background, over the past few weeks I have been > learning Wix for a special project I worked on. I've gone through > the tutorials, I've read the book by Nick Ramirez, and have been able > to create a custom managed bootstrapper application. My company has > many applications that use a few different installation technologies > (mostly NSIS) and we are looking to standardize. I think Wix is > awesome, and believe we should use it exclusively, so I guess my > question is how do I sell this to the boss? Mind you, he is very > technically proficient... > > -----Original Message----- From: Rob Mensching > [mailto:r...@robmensching.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 7:53 PM > To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: > Re: [WiX-users] WiX vs NSIS > > I'm obviously biased but non-declarative installation technologies > like NSIS are a complete non-starter for me. I don't want to write > scripts that install files then have to remember write more scripts > to uninstall those files. I had a couple consulting gigs to convert > setups from NSIS. It amazed me how much code they maintained to just > do the above. The .wxs files were usually smaller and far easier to > maintain. > > Script based installs are just the wrong way to solve the problem, > IMHO. > > > On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 4:39 PM, Wesley Manning <wmann...@dynagen.ca> > wrote: > >> Last time I looked NSIS hasn't been updated since 2009. I also >> contemplated using NSIS. >> >> What attracted me to Wix is that it is based on MSI which (at the >> time) you needed to get app Windows certified. And that it is XML >> based which I knew. And the bootstrapper, burn, because I needed >> to install .net framework, drivers, etc. If you go with Wix I'll >> recommend the book: >> http://www.packtpub.com/windows-installer-xml-3-6-developers-guide/book. >> >> Bring you up to speed very fast on basics. Only thing it didn't have >> for me was how to install drivers, advertised shortcuts, and how to >> install certificates which I picked up on the internet and this >> mail group. >> >> Wes >> >> -----Original Message----- From: Nick Miller >> [mailto:nmil...@livetechnology.com] Sent: April 16, 2013 7:44 PM >> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: >> [WiX-users] WiX vs NSIS >> >> Hi All, >> >> My company is evaluating two different Windows installer solutions, >> WiX and Nullsoft installer (NSIS). I was wondering if anyone has >> had experience with both, and could weigh in on the pros and cons, >> benefits, limitations, etc. >> >> Thanks, Nick >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> -------- Precog is a next-generation analytics platform capable of >> advanced analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes >> APIs for building apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. >> Developers can use our toolset for easy data analysis & >> visualization. Get a free account! >> http://www2.precog.com/precogplatform/slashdotnewsletter >> _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing >> list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users >> >> >> >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> -------- Precog is a next-generation analytics platform capable of >> advanced analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes >> APIs for building apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. >> Developers can use our toolset for easy data analysis & >> visualization. Get a free account! >> http://www2.precog.com/precogplatform/slashdotnewsletter >> _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing >> list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users >> >> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Precog is a next-generation analytics platform capable of advanced analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes APIs for building apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. Developers can use our toolset for easy data analysis & visualization. Get a free account! > http://www2.precog.com/precogplatform/slashdotnewsletter > _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing > list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Precog is a next-generation analytics platform capable of advanced > analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes APIs for > building apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. Developers > can use our toolset for easy data analysis & visualization. Get a > free account! > http://www2.precog.com/precogplatform/slashdotnewsletter > _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing > list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > > -- Sanjay Rao Digital Media Group, Interra Systems s...@interrasystems.com http://www.interrasystems.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Precog is a next-generation analytics platform capable of advanced analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes APIs for building apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. Developers can use our toolset for easy data analysis & visualization. Get a free account! http://www2.precog.com/precogplatform/slashdotnewsletter _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
