What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Darrel Miller — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 12:35:00 GMT

I just started using your Wix toolset to build the setup for the .Net version of our ERP product. It is early in the development cycle. I followed your getting started docs and after one evening I have nant build file that builds all my MSMs and my MSI file.
I believe that badly designed installation programs were one of the major contributing factors to the web application craze. Too many applications that should have been desktop apps were built as web apps because people were afraid of supporting the deployment.
With the rise of smart clients, installation is once again going to be extremely important. Your role in bringing awareness to the importance of well designed setups is critical to the success of smart clients. It may not be as sexy as the Xbox but it is a hell of a lot more important.

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

setup victim — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 13:19:00 GMT

One thing that gets me is that we have to create custom programs to setup databases in MS SQL and solve many other issues of creating Windows accounts and setting permissions.

Will Microsoft help make it easier to create an install that creates databases, create Windows users, setup impersonation in asp.net, improve the user name and password prompt for a .NET windows service. I just wish setup was would automate much of the setup for the rest of the MS products.

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Rob Mensching — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 15:03:00 GMT

setup victim,

Believe it or not, I'm on all that stuff you listed. Look in the Windows Installer XML toolset and you'll see the initail thinkings for doing much of what you describe above. In the next two weeks I hope a lot of what you asked for is there for you.

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Alexei Boukirev — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 16:40:00 GMT

Creating setup with WiX is now a pleasure. I did my first really complex one recently: multiple features, various custom dialogs that are skipped/displayed depending on what features are being installed and which were installed earlier.

Once you grasp the idea, the rest is a cake.

Well, I did use scripting for custom actions, and I do not regret it. It is to create/remove virtual directories in IIS. I did it all: install, rollback, uninstall, repair. The fun part is I can finally do it for proper site on a multisite hosting IIS.

With all that excitement I'm going to redo with WiX several other setups for our company products.

Thanks for very nice tool.

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Tom — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 13:02:00 GMT

Rob, just wanted to thank you for the work you do in the (perceived) unsexy "packaging and setup" area of software development. Keep up this good work; there are also people out there that really appreciate it!

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Bill Arnette — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 20:31:00 GMT

Rob, My company's core work revolves around writing custom DirectShow filters and applications. Filters are registered using IFilterMapper2::RegisterFilter which registers some binary data for a filter. AFAIK, the format for the binary filter data is not published, although the data is specified in data structures defined by the DirectShow SDK. Since SelfReg is considered evil now, what would be your suggestion for creating a setup for DirectShow filters that does not use SelfReg?

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Steve Hicks — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:01:00 GMT

Hi Rob,

You make some good points, one thing I have found developing setups for the past 3 years is that the installation of a program really is a chance to make a good first impression on the customer/user. I have found that a smooth installation can really build trust in the actual application even if the app itself is a bit outdated.

I think WIX is a great idea. Unfortunately although I can build setups with it they dont run on my machine at all. I think this is more to do with my machine though.

Keep up the good work ;)

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Martins — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 07:00:00 GMT

Keep on the work, Rob!
We use your WiX tool for pretty compicated atomated build and it works like a charm. I can hardly image we could do it other way. And forget about those paying no decent attention to installation process. There will always be such people as there will be in other areas.

Thanks.

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Cinthia — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 07:00:00 GMT

Hi, Rob,

Just want to tell you that I agree with you: setup is a lot more than copying the files...

My first task at my first job was to figure out InstallShield: something other developers wouldn't look at because they were too busy digging out other Microsoft secrets. But I managed to have a great time figuring out many details about the system and the setup process.

After reading your blog, I now understand why setup is a lot nicer now than those days when there's only InstallShield 3: Thank you and your team for making setup a "prettier" task. :)

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

KC Lemson — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 03:48:00 GMT

I enjoyed this post very much, I forwarded this to the exchange setup team :-)

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Anonymous Coward /. — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 14:56:00 GMT

<ObWhinge>
All examples that you give, and all generated xml coming out of dark, starts with...

<Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2003/01/wi">

Wouldn't it be nice if that were available?

</ObWhinge>

Setup is hard, and it doesn't pay. Although there may be cases where a product got a bad name for a bad setup, and consequently lost sales, I can't think of a case where a review said: "Sharp, well-engineered setup. Buy this!"

Thus, it really is just fighting the good fight, and saving problems for customers and support down the road

Thanks for WiX

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Rob Mensching — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 15:18:00 GMT

Anonymous Coward,

The WiX schema you mention is available in both the source download and the binary download of every release at http://wix.sourceforge.net (except maybe the first one when I was still working out bugs in my process). Look for wix.xsd. You'll find it.

Otherwise, I have to agree with you. The only time I saw setup features sell was Office2000 and that's because installing Office97 (and before) in a corporation had reached an all time low.

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Anonymous Coward — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 22:37:00 GMT

My point wasn't that I didn't know where the schema was, but rather that the autogeneration inserts the given line.

Cheers

re: What I would do if I didn't continue to "fight the good fight" for setup?

Christian Mogensen — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 16:22:00 GMT

In order for WiX to really take off there need to be more examples -- the "view source" effect should not be underestimated. I'd love to see some IIS and SQL Server examples of WiX setups. The WiX CHM file is really helpful, but the learning curve is still rather steep.

Moving on down.

when setup isn't just xcopy — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 10:00:00 GMT

Imagine a blog entry where I discuss where I'm going after working on the SDM Platform team.

Moving on down.

when setup isn't just xcopy — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 10:20:00 GMT

Imagine a blog entry where I discuss where I'm going after working on the SDM Platform team.