MSI installer

[el.cid]

Hi,

I found that only EXE installer is available. It's good enough for personal use but it's little bit obsolete for enterprise use. So my suggestions is to provide also MSI package. It have several advantages and it's only way how to distribude it via Application Catalog in SCCM 2012. It's also possible to keep install personalisation by Windows Installer parameters. Please thik about this modern way of installation... it could be really useful.

[Lefteous]

There has been an attempt to provide an MSI installer in the German forum. I guess it hasn't been continued after the initial release but you may take a look:
www.svsdownloads.de

http://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=24968

[el.cid]

Yeah, I saw that, but I meant somethig like official and regular MSI package. It's not ok to use unofficial install soure for enterprise solution...

[ghisler(Author)]

I would like to provide an MSI package, but I have no idea how to proceed. I searched for installers which would offer the same flexibility as my own installer (especially multiple languages), but it seems that only the extremely expensive (>6000 CHF) premier edition of InstallShield supports multiple installation languages. It would also break compatibility with already installed versions of TC. Any suggestions?

[sekular]

nullsoft installer and inno setup i don't think does msi. But is one of the most popular.

http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php
http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page

Does msi but not free i think $1500 for enterprise?
http://www.advancedinstaller.com

or you could look at wrapping the .exe in to msi. Pro cost $250

http://www.exemsi.com/

Apparently wix can do msi and its free, hope it helps.
http://wixtoolset.org/

[Sir_SiLvA]

Leave it as it is cause
a) the install-thingy just would get blown up by size
b) my update tool wouldnt work anymore

[ghisler(Author)]

2Sir_SiLvA
MSI is very useful in large companies, where you can auto-install it to 1000s of computers automatically with no user interaction. Unfortunately I do not have experience with the requirements of such MSI files. Therefore it's probably better if the admin creates one for his needs himself. Here is an interesting article:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Group-Policy-Deploy-Applications.html

Brief description of the above link:
1. Get WinInstall LE 2003 (link see the above page)
2. Take a snapshot of the test system with WinInstall LE 2003
3. Install Total Commander with the options you need. I recommend
that you configure the ini file location to use individual per user
settings
4. Take again a snapshot of the test system with WinInstall LE 2003
to create the MSI
5. Deploy the MSI

[milo1012]

I may not work in a large "Enterprise"-like company, but our
own internal IT system doesn't care for MSI packages or installers at all,
as long as the software doesn't need some "License server" or similar things that need some setup.
TC can easily be configured to rely on just one INI file, and no registry settings at all.

MSI: Registry based
TC: INI based


The "old" installer is established and can easily be decompressed with TC-internal functions.
Unpacking MSI packages is often a pain.
Providing such a package in addition to the classic installer wouldn't hurt,
but I see a main flaw when using MSI, because it mostly relies on registry settings:

Every installed file is registered in the registry. So what about plugins?
Should they add/register themselves to the program package? If yes, you'd need some
installer-patching program to manually register any plugin file that comes with each plugin package,
since it probably wouldn't be possible to convert plugins to a MSP package first.
The same applies to the INI files. Users can redirect sections to different INI files.
How to tell MSI that these files belong to the program...?
And so on...

I can already see users complaining about non-functioning plugins or features,
after they tried to use the "repair" function in the Windows software list,
because it resets certain parts of the Installation.

Just my opinion, by all means.