Developing Installer Packages, are Visual Studio Setup Projects suitable for complex setups

Posted by Robert on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Robert
Published on 2010-03-20T11:31:11Z Indexed on 2010/03/20 11:41 UTC
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Filed under:

installer

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windows-installer

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installshield

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wise

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wix

Are "Visual Studio Setup" Projects suitable for complex setups in different versions?

The application is rather large (> 500.000 lines of code) and is under continuous development. Every 6 to 10 month a new version gets released. We have multiple configuration files (INI and XML), registry keys, database migration scripts, etc. The application is in the progress of being migrated from VB6 to .NET . The old installer was build with Installshield. The feedback to Installshield is: Bad adaptability, bad reuse - thats way we are evaluating "Visual Studio Setup" as an alternative.

Other products we consider:

Free Solutions

WiX
NSIS

Commercial Solutions

Installshield (again..)
Wise
Advanced Installer
sth. missing?

Solutions we don't like to consider:

Inno Setup (It just doesn't feel right)

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