Best tool to create MSI

.net installation windows-installer setup-project
Raja picture Raja · Nov 4, 2009 · Viewed 8.6k times · Source

I am new to setup project creation. Now I am using Visual studio 2008 to create setup file (msi) for my project. I am quit uncomfortable in creating my own custom forms in the installation wizard as well as upgrading an existing version of my project to a new version.

Is there any other alternatives to create MSI/MSP package for Dot net projects?

Answer

marc_s picture marc_s · Nov 4, 2009

Creating MSI is not always an easy task - one tool that definitely helps is WiX - Windows Installer XML - a free-ware, open-source project run by Microsoft employees in their free time.

It's quite messy, though, to get into it - here's a good WiX Tutorial for starters.

Another interesting approach is "Wix#" (WiX Sharp) - a C# frontend that outputs WiX script from C# source - quite intriguing.

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