Wix vs installshield le

There is a Limited Edition version, however, that was less, and that was what I was using. However, it did not work with the Community Edition. The Community Edition is the free version of Visual Studio for very small companies like mine and educational purposes. InstallShield LE is just that, limited.

There are many kinds of installs that it won't create. WiX can create anything that the MSI files support. It's not just that it isn't out now, and might be out in a month, it's that there might be significant periods in the future where it is unavailable when there is a lag between a Visual Studio release and an InstallShield release. WiX is free and open source. The main drawback is that the learning curve to using it is steep. It is configured entirely by XML files; there is no user interface other than some minimal integration with Visual Studio.

It's not that XML configuration is difficult. I actually prefer XML to a UI, it's that there are a lot of options, and in some cases, it is not entirely clear how they interact. Having created a Wix installer to do exactly what you're looking to do, I'd happily recommend it. Based on my experience with Wix and InstallShield, I would recommend using InstallShield unless you need a fairly basic and straightforward installer.

I say this because the huge Wix learning curve is made even more difficult by the lack of information available. There are no books on Wix, so your resources are limited to the Wix tutorial , which is detailed and lengthy but still doesn't cover much beyond basics, and blog posts you find via Google. Granted, there are many good blog posts which detail how to accomplish specific things, but unless you don't have deadlines to meet, you probably can't afford to sit and research how to do specific things in Wix for days at a time.

Personally, I found myself doing this way too much for Wix to be a feasible solution again, unless you only need a simple installer. Ultimately, in my case, we had existing installers which were developed with InstallShield and we are simply able to be productive quicker with it.

InstallShield also has its own scripting language which has pretty good documentation too. I was able to accomplish both of these especially multiple instances in a fraction of the time with InstallShield than what it took to accomplish in Wix.

This can be even more painful if you have a mature product versus a fairly young product. The XML can still be marked up with additional metadata so we aren't restricted in what the modules can describe.

There is no advantage for WiX here. InstallShield is a text file also. It's an uglier DTD format but IsWiX solves that problem by abstracting the frequently changing portions from the rarely changing portion of the installer. InstallShield has a direct editor which shows you the underlying tables. PS- IsWiX put a lot of thought into hashing and sorting to solve branch merge problems.

We use Base Clearcase on dozens of branches so this was very important to us. As for the steep learning curve I personally started my setup project a huge web application with InstallShield, but I recently moved to WiX and I'm happy about it.

The key points of my choice:. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Installshield or Wix [closed] Ask Question. Asked 11 years, 6 months ago. Active 4 years ago. Viewed 17k times. Improve this question. Ajay Thurein Thurein 5, 5 5 gold badges 21 21 silver badges 23 23 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Create a free Team What is Teams?

Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Asked 9 years, 4 months ago. Active 7 years ago. Viewed 6k times. I couldn't seem to find a way to get this info into the InstallShield project - This was using InstallSHield limited edition for visual studio though I'm not sure which would be the best to use?

Improve this question. JustAnotherDeveloper JustAnotherDeveloper 3, 10 10 gold badges 36 36 silver badges 67 67 bronze badges. I am going through the same brutally stupid waste of time right now as well. The learning curve on WiX is insane. Installshield is easy to use but Installshield LE is useless for anything but 32 bit no additional files deployment. You may as well use OneClick. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Christopher Painter Christopher Painter Forms; using System.

Diagnostics; using Microsoft. Show "Config file update ready to run. Start "TailorMyConfig. The first accepted answer advocated this approach: One good strategy is to use InstallShield LE as a simple container and then do most of your authoring in WiX. The approach would work well in Continuous Integration environments, with all the components lending themselves to being XCopy-deploy installed on build servers, and all components being eminently suitable for automation by scripting, e.

You will want to learn more about WiX and Windows Installer technology when creating installers. Both are integrated more or less seamlessly into the Visual Studio environment.

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