Msi Installer, Create New File

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Hi,

How do I create an MSI Installer File. Orca seems only be able to edit an existing one, and does not seem to have a 'Save As'option.
I am using Visual Studio 97,which does not have native support for these features.
Surely there is another way, even if I have to write an App to build a Blank one.

For an App and Datatype that MS developed under the GNU Licence,the information relating to it is remarkably scarce.

Any form of help is appreciated.
Regards :)

Bram

Posted 23-Oct-11 15:59pm

Bram van Kampen

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Andrew Brock · Answer 1 · 2011-10-25T04:16:00

Solution 2

I used WiX[^] a while ago. It uses an XML file as the configuration of the installer. there are some examples of using it on the website, and it integrates with Visual Studio nicely.

WiX is open source and written by Microsoft.

Posted 25-Oct-11 4:16am

Andrew Brock

barneyman · Answer 2 · 2011-10-23T23:14:00

The easiest way to create a new one programmatically or with Orca is to use the UIsample.msi in the Installer SDK

If you want to use orca, you're going to have to also use the utilities in the SDK to push files into it etc

I'd recommend using a third party tool to do it, like Installshield - there are also some freebies out there

If you really want to write your own, I'd advise you write off a few man months - the documentation is there, but writing MSI's that are non-trivial (language support, patching, install on demand etc) is quite involved - I have written and maintained an MSI creator, and it's probably had 6~9 man months of development