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views:

217

answers:

1
+3  Q: 

Free MSI Authoring tools

Are there any free / open source tools that can be used to create an advanced MSI installer.

I've found the following list of MSI authoring tools, however I know very little about MSI technology and its hard to tell from that list which of those tools can actually be used to create new MSI installers from scratch (as opposed to simply viewing or editing existing installers)

+6  A: 

I prefer using WiX for creating MSI installer. Maybe it's not the easiest way to generate an MSI (because its XML-based), but its free and you will find a lot of template scripts in the internet. A script base tool like WiX doesn't need to be a disadvantage at all, its perfect for automated builds.

Also as far as i know Visual Studio 2010 should support WiX out of the box.

Alexander  2009-09-29 09:30:50
Yup, there is a learning curve, and it can get frustrating, but worth it. VS2010 won't be including WiX (http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2009/4/1/Visual-Studio-will-not-ship-the-WiX-toolset-contributes-only), which is a shame. But of course it still supports wixproj.
Si  2009-09-29 09:47:54

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