Pardon a lurker. I only know enough to be dangerous on a *nix box. Seems to me, though, that if you are shipping your product via what sounds like conventional *nix ./make ./configure and you want to get the same sort of flavor on a Windows box then WiX isn't what you want. MSBuild is closer to your expected process. That would mean maintaining distinct build system, so it wouldn't work for you.
I all you really want to do is build a folder and copy it to a target system, and nothing else, then MSI seems a bit over-engineered. I don't see where you have versioning issues, or are expecting to patch, or do minor upgrades, or are too concerned with what's in the GAC, or are looking for a presence in the Add/Remove Programs box. There's nothing wrong with a zip. Some of the best tools I have on my box were deployed from a .zip file. You could even go one step further and turn the zip into a self-extracting executable that allows a choice of target directory and launches whatever configurator you have at the end of the unzipping. And if you really need the MSI to do this because you need to keep track of the version of the folder that you deployed, or there is some compelling business reason (like it looks cool) then could you hide your zip in an MSI with the one sole custom action of unzipping? (Back to lurking) -----Original Message----- From: Martin Sustrik [mailto:sust...@fastmq.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 1:43 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: [LIKELY_SPAM]Re: [WiX-users] Very Simple Installer Ok, let me explain the problem. We have a multiplatform product that's distributed on ~10 platforms. Handling a separate distro project for windows is not an option - we would get out of sync pretty quickly. Build system and distribution system has to be unified. On other platforms it's pretty simple. Package the source code using autotools, let users install it using standard ./configure make make install procedure. This won't work on Windows, so we would like to take the directory, zip it and deploy it that way. We're trying to use msi because people are accustomed to installing software the fancy way on Win32. However, if there's no way to create a simple installer, we would have to go with a raw zip file. Martin Neil Sleightholm wrote: > 1. Don't do it - in the long run it will bite you. > 2. Take a look at Inno Setup. > 3. If you stay with WiX try using the Heat tool to create the XML, on > simple installs it does a pretty good job. > > Neil > > -----Original Message----- > From: Martin Sustrik [mailto:sust...@fastmq.com] > Sent: 03 February 2009 20:03 > To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. > Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Very Simple Installer > > :( > > Any other tool that would be basically simple zip/unzip + add a nice > windowsey GUI to the install? > > Martin > > Chad Petersen wrote: >> V2 is the same as v3 in this regard. No built-in support for wildcard >> inclusion of files. >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Martin Sustrik [mailto:sust...@fastmq.com] >> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 11:47 AM >> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. >> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Very Simple Installer >> >> Thanks David, >> >> What about using v2? Can you point me to the place to look for the >> feature? >> >> Martin >> >> David Reed wrote: >>> I'm pretty sure that there used to be, Martin, but I don't see it in >> v3; IIRC, wildcard support was explicitly dropped "by design". >>> If you figure it out and I missed it somewhere, LMK! We wrote a > custom >> MSBuild task to rip through a directory tree and write out include > files >> for WiX to do this. It's on out CodePlex now in our root project, but >> that reminds me that I've been meaning to contribute it to the MSBuild >> community tasks project... >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: Martin Sustrik [mailto:sust...@fastmq.com] >>> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 11:25 >>> To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net >>> Subject: [WiX-users] Very Simple Installer >>> >>> Hi, >>> >>> I have a directory tree I want to install at a user-specified >> location. >>> It's as simple as that... however, I don't want to manage large xml >>> definition file with an entry for each file to be packaged. >>> >>> Is there a way to do that with WiX? >>> >>> Thanks. >>> Martin >>> >>> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> ------ >>> Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with >> Adobe(R)AIR(TM) >>> software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and >> code to >>> build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power >> of local >>> resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR >> SDK and >>> Ajax docs to start building applications >> today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com >>> _______________________________________________ >>> WiX-users mailing list >>> WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net >>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users >>> >>> >>> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> ------ >>> Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with >> Adobe(R)AIR(TM) >>> software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and >> code to >>> build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power >> of local >>> resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR >> SDK and >>> Ajax docs to start building applications >> today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com >>> _______________________________________________ >>> WiX-users mailing list >>> WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net >>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users >> >> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> ------ >> Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with >> Adobe(R)AIR(TM) >> software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and >> code to >> build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power > of >> local >> resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR > SDK >> and >> Ajax docs to start building applications >> today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com >> _______________________________________________ >> WiX-users mailing list >> WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users >> >> >> >> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > ------ >> Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with > Adobe(R)AIR(TM) >> software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and > code to >> build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power > of local >> resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR > SDK and >> Ajax docs to start building applications > today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com >> _______________________________________________ >> WiX-users mailing list >> WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > ------ > Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with > Adobe(R)AIR(TM) > software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and > code to > build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of > local > resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK > and > Ajax docs to start building applications > today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ > Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) > software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to > build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local > resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and > Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
