MSI or Install Shield

Question

We need to create an installer for our application. Currently we are using Install Shield LE that is free with Visual Studio 2010. We require some of the non-free features of Install Shield and were thinking of upgrading to the full version.

However, before we upgrade, we would like to consider other options. From talking with other guys around the office, they mentioned MSI. I am new to the installer world so I was curious if any of you had an opinion on MSI or Install Shield.

Installer Requirments:
1. Must support custom actions
2. Must support dialogs
3. We also need to get info from the user at run time and put that in a config file. Not sure how this would be done. I think Install Shield has Install Script?
4. If it supported multiple languages, that would be a huge bonus

Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

InstallShield ( including 2010LE ) does create MSI projects. I happen to be an expert in both WiX and InstallShield and I use them together. If you read my blog you'll find several articles and I am currently working on a presentation that goes into the details.

WiX is good but you'll be doing a lot of raw XML and the bootstrapper options are still primitive. InstallShield is good at Dialogs and Bootstrappers among other things but not as clean as WiX at others. I get the best of both worlds by combining them.

BTW 2010LE users can upgrade to Professional for $500 which makes it $1499 instead of $1999. At my bill rate that's a couple days worth of work so the ROI on InstallShield is clear to me. Can I get everything done in Wix? Yes... eventually. You mention multilingual support so that will cost more money. :-(

IS2010LE can be made to do custom actions via WiX merge modules. Try to avoid needing them though.

BTW, you won't find yourself using InstallScript much. IS has built in data driven custom actions for both reading and writing XML ( WiX only has write ) to your config files based on properties set in your UI.

Answer 2

We've been using InstallShield 11 since 2005. We are switching to WiX. InstallShield has been our #1 customer support headache. Our FAQs are strewn with arcane tricks to overcome InstallShield deficiencies. InstallShield sometimes doesn't install because some obscure temporary system directory needs to be manually deleted (try explaining that to a consumer). We get cryptic COM 8000XXXX errors with no idea why IS is failing to install.

Recently we had a customer who flat out couldn't install one of our products, even after doing all the InstallShield voodoo. I re-wrapped the program into an MSI, and presto! instant install.

I find the text-based WiX project files much clearer, more manageable than a GUI-based installer. They are clearer and provide better control.