Software Deployment

I'm also trying to figure out how it fits into the big picture. I know M$ has their hands in this.. but why and how does it affect us as packagers?

Bob?

My understanding, based mainly on what others have told me (i.e., I'm talking out of my butt):

WiX is a toolkit which lets you build MSIs. It doesn't use a before-and-after snapshot or a guided GUI. Instead, you write XML which describes your install. You feed the XML to WiX, and it collects all the files and builds an MSI for you. Advantages of WiX include easy integration into automated build chains (everything from classic "make" to ClearCase), and a plain text package description that easily fits into generic editors and revision control systems. Disadvantages include the lack of a point-and-click GUI, so you have to actually know what you are doing to build an MSI. (Or maybe that's an advantage.)

There's a tutorial linked from the WiX site that seems pretty good; I've been making my way through it as part of my own education on package deployment administration. http://www.tramontana.co.hu/wix/

-- Ben

If you go through the Microsoft Developer blogs there is one done by a guy that either is the author of WiX or one of the authors. He posts updates and additional info about the toolset.


http://blogs.msdn.com/robmen/archive/category/4625.aspx