MSIcode

MSIcode - The Simple Way to Build Windows Installer Setups

Windows Installer has such a tremendous barrier to entry that it is inconceivable to build even a trivial setup without using a third party setup authoring tool. Even then, third party setup tools simplify only part of the task of building your setup - offering visual editors for common items like installing files, registry keys, and so on - but leaving you on your own resources to do even a slightly intelligent install. Therefore developers are often stuck trying to learn the internals of Windows Installer at some point or the other during the setup development process, time that would be better spent actually getting the setup itself done!

To make matters worse, one of the design limitations in Windows Installer is lack of scripting - while you can indeed call custom scripts, it is not possible to conditionalize the flow of the main setup sequence itself. Although you may assign primitive conditions to installation tasks, this is far from the ease and convenience of traditional setup development, and very counter-intuitive.

InstallAware embraces and extends Windows Installer, offering the true power of a scripting engine that allows conditionalized execution of Windows Installer commands. Even better, InstallAware does so while remaining within the confines of Windows Installer, and does not require or install a separate scripting engine.

Windows Installer - Scripting
Windows Installer Optimizing Compiler