CODEWITHSUNDEEP
installationwindows-installer
SensorSmith
SensorSmith

Reputation: 1220

How can one create an installer for composable applications under Windows?

We have a product with more than 100 'pieces' most of which are optional 'plug-ins'. We would like a non-programmer to be able to make a "customized" installer on a per-customer/sale basis. Our ideal would be simply a single executable/msi with a folder structure from which files/folders could be deleted, then when run the installer would simply not offer features corresponding to the deleted bits.

A separate, but similar issue is that the developers of these plug-ins are not installation experts and we would prefer not to have to edit shared installer source to add/remove one from our build-set. We've been using the "synchronized folders" feature of Advanced Installer for this, but we would like a separately selectable feature for each plug-in.

Is there an installer tool-chain that can support such(or similar) behavior?

If so does anyone have tips on how to actually implement it using said tool?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 139

Answers (2)

Christopher Painter
Christopher Painter

Reputation: 55581

I created such a tool stack at my last job. We did product line development with dozens of service families, hundreds of features, thousands of merge modules and tens of thousands of files in a typical installer.

Each merge module was authored using IsWiX and compiled using WiX. We then used WiX XML as an input to our build automation system to generate InstallShield installers. A service family would have an XML file to describe it's portion of the feature tree and it would all get emitted into an empty InstallShield project.

Finally a product XML file would describe the INSTALLDIR, UpgradeCode and other meta along with which features to consume. We built dozens and dozens of installers off this common base code.

It would take days to explain everything but that gives you the idea. For a simpler environment you could create a UI to generate WiX code and then compile it into an MSI.

But I don't know that I'd ever give this to a non-programmer. Creating installers is programming.

Upvotes: 2

Bogdan Mitrache
Bogdan Mitrache

Reputation: 10993

There is no tool that creates features at runtime in the MSI package, at least no MSI based tool. This complicates too much the installer logic, as you would need a very complex custom action that reads the contents of the folders found next to the installer and then generate entries in the following MSI tables: Files, Directory, Component, Feature, FeatureComponents. And then inter-connect all of this.

That is not something easy to do at all, and very error prone is tried by something how does not have extensive experience in building MSI packages.

have you considered/tried any non-MSI package builders?

Upvotes: 0

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