Pre-reqs of *your* software are *your* fault. Your development team implemented the specs which make your product require the crap packages. The ability not to use them is fully within your control. This sounds a lot like sloping shoulders syndrome.
I have personally fixed things like that myself. Last year one of our dev's decided to implement the use of CAPICOM for some basic password encryption & MD5 checking & thought it was OK to tell me "just self-register the CAPICOM DLL in the installer & it'll work". He was also recommending we use an out-dated version of the discontinued CAPICOM containing some known security vulnerabilities. I re-wrote his code using the CryptoAPI completely removing the need for the CAPICOM redistributable. Incidentally he no longer works for us any more. When the product developers make stupid decisions which impact upon setup development, call them on it or be prepared to put up with more of the same until the end of time. 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: Christopher Painter [mailto:chr...@deploymentengineering.com] Sent: 01 September 2010 14:06 To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn BTW, one last comment. I'm often irritated by some of the crap packages that I have to bootstrap and we often get blamed when things go wrong that were outside of our control. Because of this we created a novel use case: The bootstrapper that only does prereqs and not our MSI. In otherwords we give them 1st DISC with all the stuff they said they wanted automated and a 2nd DISC with just our MSI that's as clean as you can get and does Major Upgrades just like WiX.msi. This helps the situation by letting them use the first disc to establish their base environment and then cycle through upgrades with the 2nd DISC. When they have problems they are better able to understand that it wasn't our fault. ----- Original Message ---- From: Christopher Painter <chr...@deploymentengineering.com> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net> Sent: Wed, September 1, 2010 7:49:19 AM Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn Agree with all you said except it's not paying for the bootstrapper functionality that irritates me, it's that they have it too tightly couple with InstallShield. I'd love to have a project type that allowed me to take an externally generated MSI ( say in WiX ) and then wrap it with InstallShield's bootstrapper. I'd also like to have the ability to inject postbuild processing of the MSI tables after the MSI is built and before the EXE is generated. I can do all of this for un-compressed medias but uncompressed medias. BTW, InstallShield now sells the Stand Alone Build by itself for $500. The .PRQ files that define Prereqs are XSD based so it wouldn't take much effort at all for me to write a bootleg PRQ editor using Fireworks / IsWiX technology. One of the main things that has me interested in Burn is to go beyond what InstallShield does and provide an extensible UI / UX layer. Currently with InstallShield the only way to do this is to create middle-man EXE's that get called by setup.exe, present a custom UI and invoke the actual package and surface exit codes back to setup.exe. Not a very good design IMO. Chris Christopher Painter, Author of Deployment Engineering Blog Have a hot tip, know a secret or read a really good thread that deserves attention? E-Mail Me ----- Original Message ---- From: dB. <dbl...@dblock.org> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net> Sent: Tue, August 31, 2010 11:15:34 PM Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn That's unfair to dotNetInstaller at least. NSIS doesn't quote qualify as a bootstrapper in my book despite several nice tutorials about how to use it as such. NSIS bundles bootstrapper responsibilities together with the installer responsibilities and falls short with anything beyond the relatively basic scenarios. You can squeeze more with complex scripting, but it's just a glorified batch file, something you'll enjoy only if your last assignment was programming a VAX. Try making sense of an NSIS script written by a setup developer after a year or two of work! InstallShield bootstrapper in the recent versions of InstallShield is actually pretty good. I would feel major heartburn paying $ for a bootstrapper though, given the quality and feature set of the free options (I really think there's only one free option - dotNetInstaller, but I am bias being its maintainer and funding most of its development). We do all like the idea of Burn. It promises some nice features like a single progress bar. But I wonder how much I'll really care when it's out - "installation" is not a feature of my product just like "driving" is not a feature of my car. cheers -dB. dB. @ dblock.org Moscow|Geneva|Seattle|New York -----Original Message----- From: Goryuk, Alex [mailto:agor...@rosettastone.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 9:35 AM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn Interesting reaction, care to explain why you wouldn't use NSIS as a bootstrapper? Out of the following: http://www.installsite.org/pages/en/msi/tips.htm#Launchers http://makemsi-manual.dennisbareis.com/bootstrapper_exe_programs.htm InstallShield's bootstrapper I haven't found a single one that can be automated, scripted, pass parameters to the bootstrapper, currently updated by the community / open source and works on every platform that currently exists and with the extensibility of NSIS. Alex On Aug 31, 2010, at 9:22 AM, Christopher Painter wrote: NSIS? Sorry, I'd rather go to the dentist. Christopher Painter, Author of Deployment Engineering Blog Have a hot tip, know a secret or read a really good thread that deserves attention? E-Mail Me ----- Original Message ---- From: "Goryuk, Alex" <agor...@rosettastone.com<mailto:agor...@rosettastone.com>> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net>> Sent: Tue, August 31, 2010 8:10:20 AM Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn Have you guys tried using NSIS http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page ? On Aug 30, 2010, at 11:36 AM, Christopher Painter wrote: I've looked at dotNetInstaller and while it looks very interesting, there is no way you are going to learn that tool and get a working bootstrapper in 15 minutes. Christopher Painter, Author of Deployment Engineering Blog Have a hot tip, know a secret or read a really good thread that deserves attention? E-Mail Me ----- Original Message ---- From: dB. <dbl...@dblock.org<mailto:dbl...@dblock.org>> To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net>> Sent: Mon, August 30, 2010 8:23:36 AM Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn http://dotnetinstaller.codeplex.com will get you there in 15 minutes or so. dB. @ dblock.org<http://dblock.org> Moscow|Geneva|Seattle|New York -----Original Message----- From: Bruce Cran [mailto:br...@cran.org.uk] Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 4:46 AM To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net> Subject: [WiX-users] Bootstrapping and Burn Hi, I realise Burn has been removed from WiX 3.5, but I'm wondering if the Visual Studio bootstrapper would be a good substitute or if I should wait for a 3.6 snapshot. My main requirement is a single file that users can download to do the installation, since I hate having a setup.exe and MSI file because it's confusing and seems unnecessary. The only component of Burn I've ever used before is setupbld, but I'm wondering - will the output of Burn be a single exe, or will it be like VS where you have to package lots of MSIs and an exe into a zip file for distribution? -- Bruce Cran ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sell apps to millions through the Intel(R) Atom(Tm) Developer Program Be part of this innovative community and reach millions of netbook users worldwide. Take advantage of special opportunities to increase revenue and speed time-to-market. Join now, and jumpstart your future. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-atom-d2d _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sell apps to millions through the Intel(R) Atom(Tm) Developer Program Be part of this innovative community and reach millions of netbook users worldwide. Take advantage of special opportunities to increase revenue and speed time-to-market. Join now, and jumpstart your future. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-atom-d2d _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sell apps to millions through the Intel(R) Atom(Tm) Developer Program Be part of this innovative community and reach millions of netbook users worldwide. Take advantage of special opportunities to increase revenue and speed time-to-market. 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