What's the prime advantage to having an MSI installation package?

I don't think there is one prime advantage for all situations. Here are some things I like about it, vs other kinds of installers.

I don't think there is one prime advantage for all situations. Here are some things I like about it, vs other kinds of installers: Install logic and code is contained in a database, which is in an accessible format. I like this a lot when I'm debugging.

Rather than rebuilding your installer, you can directly edit the database with a tool like Orca (free database editing download from MS), then run the install again to test your changes. Update your custom code, temporarily condition something out, change the order of operations, whatever you need to do. Patching.

The Installer service and its corresponding tools know how to create patches containing deltas of updated files, rather than complete files. It allows maintenance sizes to remain reasonable. Administrative Images.

The installer can create an administrative image. If you've generated patches, you can apply the patches to the administrative image, and new installations can then be run from the administrative image rather than the original installer. Like slipstreaming patches in OS images.

If you're pushing your app out to a large number of machines, it's pretty cool to not need to push a bunch of patches out post-install. Other interesting features include transforms, run from source, detect and repair, component sharing, and so on.

I'd say those features are way too advanced for most people. Accepted as a nicely articulated answer. Thanks!

– kizzx2 Nov 30 '10 at 12:17.

Another good read is: Windows Installer: Benefits and Implementation for System Administrators I've been a full time setup developer for 14 years. My first 7 years were InstallScript Setup. Exe style projects and my last 7 years have been MSI based.At first I resisted MSI and then after 6 months of using it I became a true believer in how much better it is.

– kizzx2 Nov 29 '10 at 17:02 1 As an ISV, the prime advantage to me as a setup developer is to allow me to focus on what my installer needs to do and not on how to do it. As an Enterprise Engineer the prime advantage is being able to inspect and transform the package. I spent 2 years of my life "repackaging" poorly behaving installers into MSI's that followed best practices so that I could deploy (install and uninstall) them silently to ten's of thousands of machines around the globe.

Non-MSI's can be made to do this but the vast majority that I've come across (a great many) do a very poor job. – Christopher Painter Nov 29 '10 at 21:11.

Take a look at this: serverfault.com/questions/11670/advantag....

I'm pretty certain that there are enterprises that require MSI formats to remote bulk install an application on thousands of machines. However I don't deal with such organizations so don't know for certain.

MSI (or ClickOnce) was required to obtain the Windows Vista Logo Program (Microsoft official certification). I believe this requirement was removed with Windows 7, but it's still easier to get certification with MSI (see here). You don't need to buy any expensive 3rd party installer package though.

If you're going for MSI, I suggest you use WIX and learn it. Once you're familiar with it, it works pretty well.

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