Creating MSI?

Can anyone give me a pointer to creating MSI installer distros? I'm
intrigued by this technology since Dolphin uses it, and I thought I
might make use of it myself. I searched the Microsoft knowledge base but
only came up with marketing drivel. Is there a free tool for creating
installers? Pointers, anyone?

Joey
--
-- Sun Certified Java2 Programmer
-- Political Rants: www.joeygibson.com
-- My Pocket Smalltalk Stuff: st.joeygibson.com
--
-- "Do you know what I am doing, Miss Kenton? I am placing my
--  mind elsewhere while you chatter away."



-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----

"Joey Gibson" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> Can anyone give me a pointer to creating MSI installer distros? I'm
> intrigued by this technology since Dolphin uses it, and I thought I
> might make use of it myself. I searched the Microsoft knowledge base but
> only came up with marketing drivel. Is there a free tool for creating
> installers? Pointers, anyone?

Andy posted some information in c.l.s.d about this a few days ago, have a
look for a posting from him dated 17 November at 10:14. He also includes a
link to MSDN which provides a lot more information about creating MSI - be
prepared for some heavy reading though.

Ian

In article <900972$5sld7$[hidden email]> on Tue, 28 Nov 2000
12:40:05 -0000, [hidden email] said:

||| Andy posted some information in c.l.s.d about this a few days ago, have a
||| look for a posting from him dated 17 November at 10:14. He also includes a
||| link to MSDN which provides a lot more information about creating MSI - be
||| prepared for some heavy reading though.

        Do you happen to have a copy of it? My newsreader doesn't have it
anymore, and deja doesn't have a posting from Andy on 17 Nov (that I
could find). If you could send it, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,
Joey

--
-- Sun Certified Java2 Programmer
-- Political Rants: www.joeygibson.com
-- My Pocket Smalltalk Stuff: st.joeygibson.com
--
-- "Do you know what I am doing, Miss Kenton? I am placing my
--  mind elsewhere while you chatter away."



-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----

"Joey Gibson" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...

> Do you happen to have a copy of it? My newsreader doesn't have it
> anymore, and deja doesn't have a posting from Andy on 17 Nov (that I
> could find). If you could send it, I'd appreciate it.

Sure - Andy's post was ...

-~-~-~-~-~-

The Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) is a package that you install on you
client computers. Win2000/ME come with it pre-installed and there ae updates
for Win95/98. Once enables the MSI handles all the intricacies of installing
applications that make use of it.

Obviously, one needs to tell it what to install. This is done by creating a
database file (with .MSI extension) that contains all of the information
(and the DLLs etc) required by the installer to set up your app on the
target computer. The database includes registry settings and other stuff
too.

So with MSI it is no longer necessary to create a setup program per se (e.g.
SETUP.EXE). Instead, the process is data driven and what you, as software
developer provide, is the database file (SETUP.MSI).

So, the question then is, "How do I create this MSI database thingy?". Well,
there are a number of proprietary solutions by the big setup program
sellers, InstallShield and Wise. However, they tend to be very expensive
(personally, I baulk at paying $999 for my install builder when my
development tool costs arounf a quarter of that). Another is available as
part of Visual Studio (Visual Studio Installer). But of course you have to
be a paid up Visual Studio user to make use of it. The latter is the route
we've taken for the Dolphoin 4.0 installs, BTW.

An alternative would be to use the Microsoft supplied API to build te MSI
database. This is quite a complex beasty (all install stuff seems to need
myriads of options) but using Dolphin to to call this API would mean that
you could write an Install *Builder* for Dolphin (or any other Dolphin based
app) in Dolphin.

If you're interested, see the "Reference" section on the following page:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/psdk/msi/wiport_6gf9.htm

Best regards,

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support