First off. Thanks for the warm
welcome.
Second. Thanks for the quick response
and ideas by all three of you (Derek, Richard, and Bob).
Answers to your questions Derek:
Ive
been told we usually release on a quarterly cycle although that isnt
set in stone (I just started working here in Feb 06 and assisted
with the release in Mar 06. Then rolled the Jul 06 release
myself the complexity and difficulty is what led me to WiX, knowing
that theres got to be a better way than this spaghetti, procedural code.)
Our next release is targeted for end of November 06.
Our
product is a help desk/support, task, and issue tracking solution.
The Visual Studio solution file actually consists of 14 projects (any code
is C# fyi). We install 2 services, 4 libraries, 3 websites and 4 sql
server databases (as well as a couple unit test and database projects).
We interact with SQL, IIS, and Services.
Ive
done some investigation into the System.Configuration.Installer classes
and it looked promising. Not sure how that integrates with WiX
though (?). Our current installer is basically a custom rolled C#
Windows Application that looks like an installer. Using a wizard
like interface, it prompts the user for a series of configuration values (virtual
directory names, user name, password, sql server name, etc) and then runs
an install or upgrade method to do the work. It has to do things
like create/upgrade SQL databases, install aspx files, configure IIS
(create an app pool, create 3 virtual directories), it also creates a user
account (to run the app pool under), joins it to a group, modifies the
permissions on some files and folders, installs and starts 2 services, modifies
the web.config to store and encrypt connection strings and so on... J
[I know you mentioned in your article that you are interested in this
stuff]. It doesnt use installer classes yet although Im
thinking that perhaps it should but Im not sure I understand how
that integrates with the Windows Installer. Sorry this paragraph is
so long.
Based on what the 3 of you have said, it
sounds like perhaps what I should consider for the upgrade is save off the
current settings/data (web.config, sql databases, and any custom files theyve
added to the web sites) then perform an uninstall. Then let the windows
installer do an install and then restore those settings/data and then theyd
be go to go for future upgrades using the windows installer. Does this
sound reasonable? Would I be able to do this within the context of the
windows installer (msi)? Or would I have our customers run a Setting
Saver app. Run the uninstall app. Then run the new windows
installer (msi) and then run a Setting Restorer app. That
seems like a lot of steps but Im thinking aloud here. Perhaps this
could all be handled within the context of the msi.
Anyway. Thanks for reading this far
if you made it and thanks for the advice. Hope to keep the discussion
going.
Rick
From: Derek Cicerone [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 11:52
PM
To: Rick Glos;
wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: RE: [WiX-users] Question:
Migrating Existing Installer to WindowsInstaller
First off, welcome!
Theres some information that can
help guide our answers for you:
When
does your product ship?
What
is your product (just curious)? More specifically, what does it
interact with (COM, services, MSMQ, IIS, SQL, etc)?
How
does the C# installer install things? Does it use the Installer
classes or manually set registry keys and copy files?
To answer some of your questions:
Im not sure how the upgrade story
would work it all depends on how you currently handle uninstall and
upgrade scenarios. Is there something youd need to run to perform
an uninstall on the previous version (would it be managed code)? Once you
get all customers on an MSI deployed setup it should be easy to have them all
use the same technology after that point.
Thanks,
Derek
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rick Glos
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006
12:09 PM
To:
wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [WiX-users] Question: Migrating
Existing Installer to WindowsInstaller
Hello,
Ive spent the last two days getting familiar with
WiX, the windows installer, and going through the great tutorial on WiX (http://www.tramontana.co.hu/wix/).
I especially liked the article posted a year ago (http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnwingen/html/wixsetup.asp)
that talks about doing the installer during the development cycle and not at
the end of it. We are badly in need of doing this.
I have a question however. How do we migrate from our
current installer to the Windows Installer for existing customers?
We just released version 5.0 of our product. Spending
6 weeks
