Nsis Vs Installshield Software
Visual & Installer is a Visual Studio extension for creating NSIS installers. It integrates NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) with Microsoft Visual Studio IDE and allows you to create and build NSIS projects right within Visual Studio getting all benefits of common integrated environment! Key features: Full integration into Visual. InstallShield Both have been around for a while, both are pretty expensive for an individual to afford for non-commercial purposes, both support Windows Installer Service (.msi), and of course, both claim on their websites that the other product is terrible.
Need to create a Installation Package that would need to a) install a Database, b) create database and tables, c) installed already created installable in Visual Studio, d) create ODBC datasource,e) copy files.f) create shortcuts, etc
Can you please suggestion which one to use? To simplify following would be my criteria(Descending Order) Windows 98 unattended boot & installation cd 2008.
- Stable
- Fullfill all my needs.
- Easy to learn
Can you please suggest?
malat3 Answers
If you want to use WiX, you need at least a basic understanding of how Windows Installer works. The best reference around is The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer, which runs through the all basics with examples using Visual Studio and Orca.
WiX is very easy to learn once you understand Windows Installer.
A properly written Windows Installer package will be more stable and resilient than anything else you can imagine. It'll take a month or so to get your head around it, and you'll get better and learn more about it over time.
On the other hand, NSIS only takes a day to learn - it's just a simple scripting language.
@wcoenen - I'd agree that you definitely will learn more by reading various blogs of those on the WiX team, but I personally find that particular book gives a really solid foundation which makes it easier to understand the concepts they're talking about.
@Sandeep - You need an MSI package for corporate software, if you have no intention of selling your product to customers who need automated deployment in a locked down environment then NSIS will suit you just fine :)
@romkyns InnoSetup is fairly limited in my opinion, you can do just as much with a batch file and a self extracting EXE - it all comes down to your target market, corporate/enterprise clients demand MSI - home users don't care as long as it works and would happily double click on a SETUP.BAT file :)
saschabeaumontsaschabeaumontI would like to suggest another installer which is InnoSetup combined with ISTools
Innosetup has very good scripting language, and has a wizard to make it easy for you do the installation package and ISTools have the GUI interface for most of Innosetup options,
I was able to Install Mysql, its service and creating tables and other things with it, and it's much easier to learn than others.
Nsis Software Free Download
Appulus
Mohammed NasmanIt depends on what you are trying to install. If it is a simple application installation, then NSIS is fast and easy to implement (wix has a very bad documentation).But if your installer does some changes in Windows OS, like, creating restore point, installing kmdf or umdf driver, then WIX is much better than NSIS.
Bernard Vander BekenNot the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged installerwixnsis or ask your own question.
I have an MSI built with Installshield. I want to decrease the size of the MSI, so I was looking at other options. It seems like NSIS has LZMA compression which is better than whatever is used by InstallShield. Is there an easy way to convert my MSI or InstallShield Project to a NSIS (or any other installer with Better Compression) project & build it.
user93353user933531 Answer
Are you looking for some tool or utility?
There is nothing like that.
Only way is to rewrite advanced features of your MSI into NSIS manually (but the basic skeleton of installer - pages, files, shortcuts, registry keys, ini values, .. can be generated by enclosed Wizard).
SlappySlappy