WiX

The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. See http://wix.sourceforge.net/ for more information.

XMind - Mind Mapping MSI package for Enterprise deployment is available

This is a note for all others searching for a XMind - Mind Mapping version that can be deployed in Enterprise via Active Directory. I'm not a developer of XMind, but I've created a full-fledged per Machine MSI setup for the XMind Team to make XMind deployable via Active Directory. If you'd like to push it out to your users desktops - it's available now. No need to wrap suxxx NSIS installer into an MSI any longer.

It has been deployed to ~50 machines without any issues. I have not received any feedback from the XMind guys yet, but hope it will see the public light soon.

These are the setup features that have been implemented and can be enabled/disabled via transforms:

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Notepad++ MSI package for Enterprise deployment is available

This is a note for all others searching for a Notepad++ version that can be deployed in Enterprise via Active Directory. I'm not a developer of Notepad++, but I've created a full-fledged per Machine MSI setup for the Notepad++ Team to make Notepad++ deployable via Active Directory. If you'd like to push it out to your users desktops - it's available now. No need to wrap suxxx NSIS installer into an MSI any longer.

It's currently under final testing, but has been deployed and upgraded since version 5.9.3 to ~50 machines without any issues. I'm currently in contact with the main developer about a few features and hope we can get this MSI version public soon. If you need it before it get's officially published - see below for the download, please.

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PDFsam MSI package for Enterprise deployment is available

This is a note for all others searching for a PDFsam version that can be deployed in Enterprise via Active Directory. I'm not a member of the PDFsam team, but I've created a full-fledged per Machine MSI setup for them to make PDFsam deployable via Active Directory. If you'd like to push it out to your users desktops - it's available now. No need to wrap suxxx NSIS installer into an MSI any longer.

I have received feedback from the main developer that we will look into it for the next official version. I hope it can be published on the PDFsam project homepage soon.

These are the setup features that have been implemented and can be enabled/disabled via transforms:

Weiterlesen über PDFsam MSI package for Enterprise deployment is available

FastStone Capture MSI package for Enterprise deployment is available

This is a note for all others searching for a FastStone Capture version that can be deployed in Enterprise via Active Directory. I'm not an employee of FastStone Soft, but I've created a full-fledged per Machine MSI setup for them to make FastStone Capture deployable via Active Directory. If you'd like to push it out to your users desktops - it's available now. No need to wrap suxxx NSIS installer into an MSI any longer.

It was me a pleasure to help these guys and they are currently doing their in-house testing, but as these guys have been proven to be are really open minded and thankful - I'm sure they are able to provide you the new MSI setup before it get's published on their site in future. I cannot publish the setup here as this is not Open Source.

Weiterlesen über FastStone Capture MSI package for Enterprise deployment is available

How to create a MSI for deploying Fonts in Enterprise?

Like me you may need to deploy Fonts in your Enterpise network via Active Directory.

In past we have seen some tools on the net that made this Font installation an easy task, but all of them have faded away or have been commerialized with questionable feature lists in basic payed version. It took me an unacceptable hard time to find the way to go as the search results give tons of bad results and none of these tools around is really easy to use. I wished I would have found a GUI tool that works like drag and drop, browse registry and other stuff to create at least easy type setups, but this seems only to be a very big wish. After some weeks with MSI and WiX I understand more and more that such a tool cannot be easy - except it would be very limited in functionality and what is more worse than using 5 tools in a long term view? In a small world you may only need a Font installer, but later you need much more and it's better to learn MSI and WiX the hard way. You cannot get around if you need to deploy software in daily business.

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How to create MSI packages with multilingual user interface (MUI) ?

Multilingual user interface (MUI) setups are really common in todays world. Mostly seen with NSIS setups. If your software is multilingual you don't need to maintain tons of setups (aka - one MSI for every language). Nevertheless the below is officially not supported by Microsoft, it's possible and widly used - also by Microsoft. The most popular software I came across in the last days is Apples Safari 5.x browser. I'm sure if you search more, you will find much more setups.

See Available Language Packs or Locale Identifier Constants and Strings for the available LangID's and cultures.

How are the multilingual user interface MSIs created?

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WiX: How to check if JRE is installed on install only

Checking JRE can be done with below code. I found this on the net, but it failed for me with WixUI_FeatureTree and WixUI_Mondo setup interfaces. The problem was that the condition has not checked only on install. Therefore I got the message also if I tried to modify features and this prevented my from changing them. The added Installed OR makes sure this condition is only checked on the very first install and no more later. It would otherwise cause serious issues for the user if the application should be removed after the JRE has been uninstalled.

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WiX: How to use RemoveFolderEx in your XML scripts

Sometimes applications are creating files after an MSI installation has completed that are therefore not visible to the MSI setup. These files may need to be removed before install or at least on uninstall to free up disk space and for other cleanup reasons. In WiX Toolkit 3.6 there is a new feature named RemoveFolderEx to solve this problem very easily.

In case that you install or uninstall an application you are able to recursively remove directories without writing strange CustomActions for this task. For install I'm using it to upgrade from a manual "copy" type installation to an MSI version. It's also a must if you do not have any idea about the file names created in the application directories or simply for files left behind for unknown reasons. There are a few requirements if you'd like to use the tag in your WXS scripts.

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WiX: Beware of adding Icon tags with "SourceFile" value pointing to .EXE application files

If you create MSI setups with WiX Toolkit you should be aware that <icon /> tags in your .WXS file will cause your resulting MSI file to grow by the size of EXE file linked in SourceFile attribute.

Don't do this:

<icon id="example.ico" sourcefile="SourceDir\MyApp.EXE" />

Always use small .ICO files.

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