What installation product to use? InstallShield, WiX, Wise, Advanced Installer, etc

Mat_Nadrofsky_26853 0
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I'm currently doing some investigation on moving off of the installation package we currently use (Wise Installer 9) and moving to something that will handle things like Windows Vista, Windows 7 and 64-bit systems. Localization of the installers would be of benefit since we do have a number of French Canadian clients as well.

We currently have installations for software packages and utilities in the following technologies:

  • Progress 4GL
  • Visual Studio 2005
  • Visual Studio 2008
  • .NET Compact Framework 3.5

I've already looked at WiX and InstallShield, and also the Altiris made replacement for the old Wise system.

I haven't played with InstallShield much at all yet, but from everything I've seen/installed it seems to be one of the industry favourites. I've browsed through some of the Stack Overflow tags relating to InstallShield and I'm curious to see what the group says about it.

Do I just by default go to them? How good is WiX at non-.NET stuff?

advanced-installer installshield installation wix windows-installer
5 Answers

I inherited a handful of InstallShield (v12) projects. The files are all text/XML and thus there are no version control issues. We have a build machine that uses their command line tools, which works well. What I don't like is (a) the cost per developer seat and (b) bugs.

Inno Setup is very capable/flexible and there are generally multiple ways to accomplish a goal, which led to a steep learning curve. We are several versions behind their latest version (due to their upgrade cost structure). Because our products run on Widows, if we have to switch I might first research Microsoft's installer solution that comes with a MSDN subscription.

user_270680
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