Why use Windows Installer XML (WiX) over VDPROJ?

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It would take me hours to rant about everything I hate about VDPROJ. I won’t because in my (expert) opinion it’s already settled law that VDPROJ sucks. If your install is so simple that you haven’t noticed any problems, then be my guess and stick with it. But if you already find yourself fighting the tool trying to get it to do things it doesn’t do, then take my advice and dump it fast for WiX.

10 things I hate about VDPROJ

  1. No MSBuild Support. Sure, you can call devenv from the command
    line but it’s not as good.
  2. No exposing of the critical concept of
    a component. Every file/reg key is a keyfile of it’s own component.
  3. No effective way to fully exclude automatic dependency scanning.
  4. Shortcuts are always Advertised
  5. No way to describe a service.
  6. No way to describe many things which leads to overuse of custom
    actions.
  7. No way to fine control the scheduling / execution of
    custom actions. Too abstracted.
  8. Abstraction is wrong. Deferred
    CA’s are scheduled with Impersonation which breaks on Vista.
  9. Various limitations lead you down a path of massaging the built MSI
    during postbuild to get around all the limiations. Results in a
    very poor build automation hacks.
  10. Merge Module directory tables
    are authored incorrectly.
  11. 100 other things suck that I’m not
    remembering right now.

More Related Contents:

  1. Extract MSI from EXE
  2. How to implement WiX installer upgrade?
  3. Why does MSI require the original .msi file to proceed with an uninstall?
  4. What is the wix ‘KeyPath’ attribute?
  5. How to associate application with existing file types using WiX installer?
  6. How to register file types/extensions with a WiX installer?
  7. How do I fix the upgrade logic of a wix setup after changing InstallScope to “perMachine”
  8. Wix custom uninstallation action – how to run before msi removing files
  9. Uninstalling an MSI file from the command line without using msiexec
  10. What is the purpose of administrative installation initiated using msiexec /a?
  11. How do I avoid common design flaws in my WiX / MSI deployment solution?
  12. Windows Installer and the creation of WiX
  13. How can I determine what causes repeated Windows Installer self-repair?
  14. Wix to Install multiple Applications
  15. How can I find the Upgrade Code for an installed MSI file?
  16. WIX Installer with modern look and feel
  17. Create MSI or setup project with Visual Studio 2012
  18. How can I programmatically read the properties inside an MSI file?
  19. How to find the UpgradeCode and ProductCode of an installed application in Windows 7
  20. How to Explicitly Remove dll During Majorupgrade Using Wix Toolset
  21. File of a new component isn’t installed because there was an old component with the same file
  22. Wix: How to set permissions for folder and all sub folders
  23. How to interactive a silently installing msi? (Progress data and cancel it)
  24. How to execute custom action only in install (not uninstall)
  25. Wix burn doesn’t allow to remove file
  26. Forcing an upgrade of a file that is modified during its initial installation
  27. MSI Reference Counting: Two products install the same MSIs
  28. How can I create an MSI setup?
  29. Speed up Build-Process of WiX-Installer
  30. WiX – Doing a major upgrade on a multi instance install

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