Software Deployment

If that works I’ll eat my hat!

You have too much time on your hands! [;)]. I take it you don’t have Wise or Admin Studio to hand? I guess you could do this with WiX (I don’t know much about it), its free but it’s going to take a bit of effort to learn.

You could call a VBS via a custom action, not slick but it might suffice.

Charlie

Yeah, I figured as much... It was worth a shot though. I actually do have Wise and it works perfectly. But my company dosen't want to license it because they feel they can get along fine without it - I think this alone proves them wrong. But hey, I'm the new guy, they're not going to listen to me [&:]. Thanks for the feed back though, It's reasuring. I'll try to hustle them into buying Wise....

Wish me luck!
Anthnoy

Hehe poor you! Pack it using the eval copy of Wise ;).

SVS it, you know you want too..... Some times i wish i could SVS parts of my life... :)

Hi Anthony,
have a look here: http://www.spinnersoftware.com/kb/en/msi/createmsi.html
Maybe, it's not the fastest approach, but you definitely learn a lot with it!
Let us know, how you make progress.
Keep MSI'ing.
Regards, Nick

direct your management here and we can all tell them they are idiots.

so in order to get things your way you need to put this in terms of TCO

Total cost of ownership.

Wise = $5000
Time = $100 / app

Orca = free
Time = $1500 / app

doesnt take a rocket scientist to work it out..

TCO is a packagers friend when talking purchasing real software

Thanks for the reinforcement jmcfadyen. I think if I finish the project I'm on now with Wise, they'll give it serious reconsideration. Especially since the my current partner (a 6 year IT vet) is having major issues completing this project using Orca. Our deployment tactics are becoming more sophisticated and I don't think Orca's cutting it anymore.

On that note, maybe you could help me out with a packaging issue I'm having using Wise Eval version. I'm currently editing an msi (ArchGIS Desktop 9.2) in which I'm trying to add files to, select included features and change a property. I've been able to make the adjustments and install the package successfully using Window Installer Editor. However, when I do an administrative install on the package to add service packs to it (using msp's), I'm having two MAJOR issues:

1. I keep getting: "Error 1334. the file 'xxxx' cannot be installed because the file cannot be found in cabinet file 'm3.cab'. This could indicate a network error, an error reading from the CD-ROM, or a problem with this package." where xxxx is a file I added to the package using wise.

2. When I try to edit the complete msi (after including service packs) in windows install editor, I get several dozen errors resembling: "File with key ESRI.ArcGIS.ADF.Connection.dll.75094FF2_F40B_49E0_AF17_905249ED17A3 located at C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\MSIAE.tmp\WIS12770.TMP could not be compressed. This may be a temporary file location. Make sure file ESRI.ArcGIS.ADF.Connection.dll.75094FF2_F40B_49E0_AF17_905249ED17A3 has a source path."

Do you have any idea why this is happening? I appreciate any input