Software Deployment

In most of the corporate environments, you would already have these redistributables installed as part of the build.
If not, the commonly used method is to make use of merge modules available for these redistributables.

ORIGINAL: yannara

2. I use snapshot method, it seems to work better. With monitoring, I usually get empty packages.


empty packages? Your capture result must have some data.
There are few standards for registry exclusion.
The below AD post exactly describes the approach.
http://itninja.com/question/exclusion-list&mpage=1&key=bootㅼ

You'll have to make your own exclusion list depending upon your environment.

It sounds like you're using Wise?

- Turn off SmartMonitor. It's more trouble than it's worth.
- Make sure you have the 'Quick Compile' option switched off.
- Set it up so that advertising information gets written to the advertising tables rather than the Registry table.
- Change the default Windows Application template so that the AppSearch and LaunchCondition standard actions are in the right order. By default, LC appears before AS!

Have I missed anything?

EDIT:
Yes - read & digest Phil Wilson's The Definitive Guide To Windows Installer

I'd suggest cleaning up the registry. You can wind up distributing a lot of junk that will not affect things initially but can cause problems down the road - like DHCP info for instance. Ideally you want your packages to be only related to the software you're distributing. Otherwise, when things start going funky, it's a lot more work to troubleshoot and discover that your Flummbuster package is distributing reg info for something completely unrelated to the app that's no longer communicating with its server.

Ideally you want your packages to be only related to the software you're distributing.Ideally?!?!?!? That's ALL you'd want in your packages!

ORIGINAL: SandeepPanat
In most of the corporate environments, you would already have these redistributables installed as part of the build.

Yes, I tried this, that I input latest full Direct X 9.0c, and redistributables 2005SP1 and 2008SP1 packages into Operating System Deployment, installation was succsessful. Then I ran the same software, which requires redistributable 2005 and directX... guess what.. it still requires them and download of DirectX started... why in hell? [:'(]

empty packages? Your capture result must have some data.
By empty, I ment that of original source is 10mb big, result .msi is something like 400kb.

It sounds like you're using Wise?
Nope, Admin Studio 9.5 but as I heard, they are much alike.

I'd suggest cleaning up the registry. You can wind up distributing a lot of junk that will not affect things initially but can cause problems down the road - like DHCP info for instance. Ideally you want your packages to be only related to the software you're distributing.
How about I erase everything else before the build process, leaving just HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ApplicationX. Or do I really have to know that software registery components before making this kind of decision?

original source is 10mb big, result .msi is something like 400kb. It sounds like your MSI uses an external CAB file to contain the files whereas the original source EXE will contain them "internally".

So actually, my main issue is this - is this accaptable, that with each application, DirectX, Redistritable 2005 and 2008 will be installed? This means, that during another application with same requirements, these prerequirement components will always be reinstalled.

If you've got dependencies outside of the application (ie other software or installations), it has always worked better for me to chain the dependencies than to make them part of the install. If one of the dependencies updates, you just update that particular piece of software and not your package. And you are right that other installs may require that same dependency. Your app management suite should have those installable separately and then you can chain them dependency1- dependency2- dependency3 -software. Then when something else requires dependency 2 to install, it will be there already.

ORIGINAL: Arminius

If you've got dependencies outside of the application (ie other software or installations), it has always worked better for me to chain the dependencies than to make them part of the install. If one of the dependencies updates, you just update that particular piece of software and not your package. And you are right that other installs may require that same dependency. Your app management suite should have those installable separately and then you can chain them dependency1- dependency2- dependency3 -software. Then when something else requires dependency 2 to install, it will be there already.


Yes, I agree that dependencies should not be part of application, so before recording the installation I first install depencies and get source computer ready. In SCCM I do then few tasks, which installs one depencies at the time, so this is not a problem.

Thing I´m worried about is, that is seems so that every application requires different version of these dependcies, and they are not compatible between to other application requirements. So this comes to the situation, where DirectX and Redistribuable 2005/2008 will be reinstalled during second application installations.

I did a test - during installation of WinDVD software, popup prerequirements window comes which informs of installation DirectX over the web and MS Redistritable 2005 component. These two are included in unpacked application installation source. I downloaded these from the web to get most recent versions. I ran setup again - BAM, it still requires the components, which means setup does not recognize newer versions of prerequirements.

You and your colleagues (or your Engineering/Build/Desktop/whatever-they're-called) decide on which version is standard for your build. Updates are controlled and pushed out after regression testing against your installed application base.

Part of the packaging process is then to disallow/engineer out the installation of any other version of that dependency.

I have a problem with multistep .msi creating. When using multistep method, after executing the installer and making any changes, wizard needs to be started again to finish the proces. But in my case, it requires setup.exe and starts installer again, even if that program is installed manually. What I´m doing wrong?