I'm currently trying to make a download/install file for a CD, and I've never done this or written any type of coding before so I'm somewhat at a loss. When we last created an installer package (I wasn't employed yet) we used InstalShield, but that was decades ago, and we can't afford the 500$+ price to get it again.
Currently I'm trying to work off the old download package we have. There is the Windows Installer Package (made by InstalShield) called CD Cat v6.msi, and then another file called CDcatv6.exe (which launches a window for the customer to browse options) and then a file called Data.cab which has all the files for the entire catalog in it.
I was thinking perhaps I can just replace a lot of those files with the current information. Replace the CDcatv6.exe file with my v7.exe file (but change the name so its CDcatv6.exe) and then replace all the files in the Data.cab file with the current ones. But that's turning out to be a huge issue.
I did a bit of searching to learn what a .cab file was, and downloaded the Cab File Maker 2.0 (after quite a bit of searching!). I'm having a difficult time using it though, as it wants all the files that I put in it to make the .cab to be in .ddf format. I have no idea what that is, much less how to make it. I tried using 'save as' to do it, but since all the files I need are PDF's there's no option for it and I cant export the files to it either.
I tried looking at other ways that people made Cab files, but I don't know many of the file types or programs their talking about. I'm not a programmer by any means, but I have to learn quick I guess, so any information on how to do this will help greatly. Is it even possible to replace all the files seamlessly and have it work properly? Or is there an easier way to create a fill that the customer can click on and have it download to their desktop?
I don't think simple editing of Data.cab will work. There is installer logic stored in other InstallShield files. It could work if and only if the file set is the same, I mean no files changed its names, no new files added, no new registry entries required etc.
To create a CAB file, use cabarc.exe from Microsoft Windows SDK.
Creating a brand new installer may be a better option. Look at this tools for creating installers:
Advanced Installer
NSIS
WiX toolset (with tutorial)
You best solution is to use dark.exe (part of the WiX toolset).
This will enable to you decompile the MSI and CAB files, edit the installer source as XML and then recompile this into a new executable. Unfortunately this route is not for the faint of heart and what you save on price will cost you in time.
I'm curious how your company created an MSI decades ago, but Sasha is right about time and money trade-offs. However if you're working with Visual Studio, you might try the InstallShield Limited Edition for Visual Studio. It may have enough capabilities to suit your needs.
Thanks for pointing to CABARC, that looks exactly what i was looking for, due to information on:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/bb417343(v=msdn.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN#top
That make me look how to download it, but i found this post:
Where can I get the cabarc utility?
Where it explains CABARC may be obsolete and there is another utility called MAKECAB that cames with Windows 11, i had try it at command line and it is there.
Thanks a lot.
Related
I need to include all the output from some of the programs projects in the installer... my question is similar to the one in this post: How to add a whole directory or project output to WiX package
However, I am afraid I don't really understand the answer given in this link. From all the reading I have done, I think I need to use Paraffin to do this. But is there a "start from the very beginning, how-to" resource for using paraffin?
I have read this page: http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2008/12/22/paraffin-3-0-now-with-full-wix-3-0-support.aspx
and one of the posts mentions calling paraffin from a bat file. Is this how one would "use paraffin" in their installer? If it makes a difference, I have been using Visual Studio to work on this project, and am also not sure how to use command line from within Visual Studio. Does anyone have any resources for a very new beginner? Thanks.
I ended up including each .dll and .exe manually, since they don't change very often. It was fairly easy to format them in this style:
`<File Id="WhateverId" Name="NameToDisplayAfterInstall" Source="$(var.ProjectName.TargetDir)Filename.ext" />`
I used Excel to format a list of files quickly and easily. I put all of these File tags in the <DirectoryRef Id="INSTALLLOCATION">
tag.
I did figure out how to scrape all the dlls and exes from the project output by using Heat (not paraffin) and harvesting a directory, not a project. Harvesting a project yields only the main exe and dlls. The problem with harvesting a directory, at least in my case, is that I ended up with a lot of excess files, (like .pdb and .xml) that I didn't want.
I would like to create an installer of my program.
However because the installation is quite complicated, I need something more advanced than installshield limited edition.
I have to run another installer from my current one. It doesn't matter if the user press "cancel" or installs the program, I just need to run it.
I have to install a directory structure on user computer which has a lot of files, that's why i'm going mad with wix: 100 files and I should write all of them with my hands in that xml file? Are we mad?
I have to install files from point 2 into a registry key. That's why I was using wix
I played with nsis long time ago and I liked it, but the language is not so nice.
Wix has "similar" problem. I would love using something like C# and things like that otherwise I'll stick with wix but I need a way to add files faster to xml file, can't add 100 files manually.
Any suggestion?
You can give Advanced Installer a try. It has folder synchronization, which means it can batch add contents of folders, with the possibility to filter out certain file name patterns, for example you'd want to filter *.pdb files and add all the rest to the project automatically.
I use it myself and never had a problem.
Wix Heat can generate the wxs source files for you.
You should look at InnoSetup. It has an IDE available that allows drag and drop of files (and multiple select in a file selection dialog), can launch other applications (including additional setup files), create and modify registry settings, and supports pretty complex scripting if needed. It's pretty easy to use, and the documentation is pretty good. It comes with pretty comprehensive sample installations, too.
The installation scripts are created by the IDE and then compiled into an installer, so the script source is editable by hand if needed. It's also not XML, but more like an INI file, so it's a little easier to work with manually as well.
Best of all it's free, and so is the IDE.
I would go back to using NSIS, if you use the HMNSIS editor http://hmne.sourceforge.net/ to write your scripts you can use the Wizard mode to make a list of the files and directory structure you will use in your installer.
Running other installers and registry settings are also easily done with NSIS.
Looking for an installer that will take any number of files in a folder and make each file into an exe (not put them all into one exe). Will any installers easily do this? I haven't been able to find a feature name for this, so it's made it difficult to determine from a feature list.
Take a look at Nullsoft installer. About anything can be scripted w/ it.
I've been looking at various different ways of making an installer (see How to create a robust, minimal installer for Windows? for details), and I've run into the same thing in a couple of them (WiX and the visual studio installer creator); there doesn't seem to be a way to say "When you build the installer, include every file matching c:\somefolder\*.xml".
I can go and select *.xml and add all the files that match to the project at once, but then if I add another .xml file to my program later, I'd need to go and add that to the installer myself.
Is this a core limitation of windows installer, that I can't just tell it "sort all the XML files in this folder out and don't bother me about them"?
WiX toolset contains an utility called Heat. It can generate the WiX authoring for you based on your needs. The output can be further transformed by XSL templates (-t switch).
Hope this helps.
InstallShield also has this ( see Dynamic File Linking ) but honestly I don't like this pattern in general. It's non-deterministic in nature. I speak from 14 years of experience when I say that if a file is added or removed from my application I want to explicitly add it or remove it from my applications installer. Any magic to automate this has always bitten me in that it takes what should have been a build time error and turns it into a run time error.
My best practice is to write some automation that compares what was available to be consume against what was consumed by the installer. The two lists must match 100% or otherwise fail the build. When the build fails you must choose to either add the file to the installer or cease to archive the file to the directory. With the right tooling, it's trivial to add a file to the installer and the result is 100% accuracy of developer intent being applied to the installer.
I've got a relatively simple project that is under source control (svn), and I wanted to create an installer. I know that I could (should) use WiX, but as I'm new to creating installers I thought it'd be easier to just use the built-in Visual Studio (2010) Setup and Deployment Wizard.
Unfortunately, it seems that files including external (non-project maintained) documentation, configuration files, and "Content" files are added with absolute paths. This, of course, is suboptimal. I searched the web, but found only the same question, without an answer. Another stackoverflow user seems to have asked a similar question, but the only answer, which suggests ClickOnce, seems off-base (I'd like to have an MSI that I distribute not a web-based installation).
Does anyone know how (or whether) this can be fixed?
With VS2005, sometimes the paths stored in the vdproj file were absolutes, and sometimes relatives. In my case, it seemed to be related to whether the files were accessed via the canonical path or not. Here's a concrete example:
Source is on C:\Views\builddir, open solution C:\Views\builddir\solution.sln and add files from C:\Views\builddir\.. and VS2005 would add relative paths into the vdproj file. However, if you map that builddir to a letter drive, for example, make a subst from C:\Views\builddir to s:, open the solution via S:\solution.sln, and then add files by navigating to S:\.., VS2005 would insert absolute paths into the vdproj files. Whether VS2005 displayed paths as absolutes or relatives had no relation to what it stored in the vdproj files.
So, it may well be that the problem comes down to what path you're using to open that solution.. opening \\server\shareddir\solution.sln might get different behavior than mapping \\server\shareddir to W: and opening w:\solution.sln.
You can always add the files, then use a text editor (e.g. notepad) to change the absolute paths in the vdproj file to relative ones. You'll be fine until you change that project again.
MS doesn't seem to really fix minor bugs like this so much as rewrite the code to introduce an entirely different set of bugs, so VS2010 might still act this way.
FYI, why would one want to map an absolute path to your builddir? It was a holdover from the bad old days when VS didn't do anything correct with relative paths.
As tzerb mentioned, the main source of confusion might be that paths show up as absolute under the property window inside VS, but when you look into the actual VDPROJ file you should see the paths show up as relative. However, as patbob mentioned, I believe the paths ARE stored as absolute when they come from a different letter drive.
It might be easier now but when you start bumping into the limitations of the tool it's going to get real hard. Let's not even talk about the bad practices it will encourage which could end up being real hard for the poor end user installing your product. You've got Visual Studio 2010 so InstallShield LE ( free ) would be a better choice.
Otherwise, to answer your question, it will only use absolute paths if it can't caculate a relative path. ( for example c:\foo\foo.vdproj consuming d:\foo.txt consuming c:\test\foo.txt should automatically be ....\test\foo.txt )
BTW, if you decide to check out WiX and want some "easy" check out my IsWiX project on CodePlex. I'm trying to bridge the feature gap between InstallShield and WiX.