how to make setup of a windows application?

I am using WiX to create MSI installations.

MSI is better than old-fashioned setup.exe because MSI is basically a description of how the system should look after the package installer, rather than what should be done to install the package. This conceptual change allows system to determine what exactly should be done to reach the target state, which reduces possibility of error (e.g. remove DLL when uninstalling, but that DLL is required by another application). Also, MSI is a de-facto standard in Windows installations.

Regarding WiX, here are the rumors I have read somewhere. Microsoft has published MSI protocol and published Orca.exe as MSI viewer/editor. But, they did not want to create a real tool for editing MSIs but rather left that to the market. And market did what it did - now you have dozens of tools that can be used to create MSI, but if you start digging into what they do, you'll see what I've seen long ago - it's all crap. None of the tools, no matter how expensive it is, does not give you ability to edit MSI. They rather say - Microsoft has defined some MSI, but don't bother with it, we know it better and here is our model. That's wrong because then you have to learn two things instead of one, GUIs are not standardized (every tool is completely different than all the others), and MSI capabilities are reduced to those features supported by particular tool, which is crap.

As a result of such state of affairs, Microsoft made conclusion that it has to create a tool that would be used to edit MSIs, and hence the WiX project (Windows Installer XML). At some point of time, WiX project left Microsoft and, as far as I understand, it's independent project now (link above is official WiX presentation). WiX can be used to define, step by step, complete content of MSI file, according to MSI protocol. In theory, all features of MSI are directly supported by WiX.

For the end, just to note that I'm not related to Microsoft or WiX. I understand that this text looks a lot like a MS commercial, but it's not. It's just that at some point in time, when I really needed good tool for making MSI, I was enraged looking at all the garbage published on that topic. In fact, I disagree with most of MS decisions, but when speaking of MSI and WiX I am 100% sure that they were designed and implemented by a handful of horribly smart guys.

Edited by zoranh, 24 September 2010 - 01:45 PM.