Software Deployment

If the file is an MSI wrapped in a setup.exe then extract the MSI and transform it.

If the file is an old legacy setup.exe I would snap it

If your not bothered about cleaning up and using msi technology and the program is a legacy setup.exe then silent iss it.

Thanks for your reply. I forgot to say, the installation doesn't extract an msi in %temp%. Cheers. I was just wandering if there was a standard I should stick to.

Not a problem.

Basically when you snap an application, be it an msi or legacy setup, you take full reponsibility for it for ever more. Every patch or update the vendor produces will have to be snapped and managed, obviously there are pluses and minues to each method.

Also you need to take into account the support of an application. If you phone up a vendor and say your having problems but you snapped it they may very well tell you to take a hike :)

Each client will have their own standards and a different set of exceptions to those standards. In general, I would snap a vendor's non-MSI install anyway, simply to find out what it's going to do to my build. Would you be happy, for example, for an install to upgrade your build's version of MFC42.DLL which you have carefully nurtured over the years to be stable with as many of your apps as possible? If an install is going to wreck your build, re-package it. If it's well-behaved, create a respose/answer file and use the vendor's Setup.EXE/Install.EXE/Whatever.EXE.

Hyperion: it must be a flavour of EssBase, then. I've re-packaged the Excel add-in and Analytical Services. Both were quite straightforward, as I recall.

Great advice, thanks very much.

As a follow-up, one of the things I like to do (if time allows...) is to run and re-capture the vendor install AFTER I've run my re-package. That way, I can be (almost) sure I didn't miss anything or delete some reg key or file inadvertently.

Meic,
When you repackaged Hyperion did you end up doing a setup capture or using an iss to do the install. I am trying to do the same thing with 9.2.0.3 and since it is an Install Shield app it looks like it should be able to creat an ISS file to do the install, but I am not having any luck with the normal command line options, like -r or /r to get it to create the iss file.

Thanks

Our standard procedure is to snap an EXE installer (if we can't extract an MSI from it) and use a transform for MSI's
just gives us more control and cleaner...