Recommended resources for learning about Windows Installer [closed]

Question

Can you recommend any resources for learning about Windows Installer?

The best book I've found is "The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer" by Phil Wilson, but it's not very beginner friendly.

I've been asked to make recommendations for those wishing to 'get up to speed' quickly and don't know what to recommend beyond that book and a few Microsoft sites:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa367449.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/Windows_Installer_Team/

Is there anything else you've found useful for learning about Windows Installer?

Pergola

Answer 1

Check out http://wix.sourceforge.net/. WIX is a great tool when creating windows installers. The site contains some useful links (e.g. http://www.tramontana.co.hu/wix/).

Corrupt

WiX is my first choice for creating installers, but I have found that there it really needs a level of understanding about how MSI & Windows Installer works before it can be used for anything other than the very trivial. – Pergola

Yes, but that's true of any free tool for creating non-broken MSI Files. Many of the commercial ones don't have a great reputation, either. If you want easy, use Inno Setup, but it won't be MSI. NSIS is said to be easy, too. – Overripe

WiX is an advanced tool, something that you may move on to after reading a book and getting an understanding of how Windows Installer works. It's definitely not a beginners tool IMHO. – Granoff

Answer 2

I'd also recommend "The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer", I think it is really beginner friendly as it gives you an deep knowledge of how Windows Installer works in under 300 pages. I'd rather a nice short book that is straight to the point, rather than a 600 page monster with lots of fluff and examples and information that I'll never refer to again. For me, it helped me to understand some of the "magic" that was going on with InstallShield projects, and I'll be using it as a reference if we decide to migrate to WiX in the future (it's planned, just need to find the time between releases to do it!)

I'd also recommend Rob Mensching's blog at http://www.robmensching.com/. Reading through his old blog "When setup isn't just xcopy" is a very good (and interesting) way to get a handle on some of the more advanced functionality in Windows Installer. (Strangely enough, I beleive I saw a couple of answers from Rob on here last week regarding WiX questions.)

Granoff