[wix-users] Automating MSI building

[Christopher Painter]

I have some C#/DTF code you can use as a starting point if you like.  I once had a customer who  shipped an MSI and a transform tool to a value added reseller.  The VAR could use the transform tool to tweak and or "seal" certain properties and add or supersede files.   The VAR then distributed the MSI and tool to customer IT who could do the same before shipping the MSI off to customers.    This transform tool has a library that handles authoring the various tables, generating a new CAB and inserting it into _Sterams table.


________________________________
From: wix-users <wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> on behalf of Brett Cunningham <brettcu at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2017 8:37 PM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List
Subject: Re: [wix-users] Automating MSI building

Thank you to everyone that replied!

Christopher - I think your recommendation is closest.

I think we are going forward with a "build" server that will handle the MSI
compilation/automation on the per-customer basis in order to provide a
signed MSI with a custom conf.ini.

Thanks again to this community!

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 9:24 PM, Christopher Painter <chrpai at iswix.com>
wrote:

> It's not always that bad.   You can build a "seed" MSI and then have a
> postbuild step to insert an additional file into it and then sign it if
> desired.  One example was a .com company called signature mail.  The
> customer signed and faxed a form that then generated an office addon that
> included their signature.
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: wix-users <wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org> on behalf of
> Walter Dexter <wfdexter at gmail.com>
> Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2017 6:07 PM
> To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [wix-users] Automating MSI building
>
> I'm not fully understanding tbh. But having a unique MSI autogenerated for
> each customer sounds like trouble.
>
> > On Feb 11, 2017, at 5:44 PM, Brett Cunningham <brettcu at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for the reply!
> >
> > Customers deploy their own server. This is one of the values that must be
> > in the conf.ini file. Without knowing this value, the endpoint client
> does
> > not know what server to pull from.
> >
> > This is why we think that the customer's server could query an API and
> pass
> > along the right info.
> >
> > Does this make sense, or is there something else that makes more sense?
> >
> >> On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 5:52 PM, Walter Dexter <wfdexter at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Is there anything confidential in there?
> >>
> >> Are the files small enough you could include them all and pick at
> install?
> >>
> >> Or put the config file in a cab that you deliver with the MSI, and have
> a
> >> single stock MSI?
> >>
> >> Or even pull the config down from a server at install?
> >>
> >>> On Feb 11, 2017, at 1:18 PM, Brett Cunningham <brettcu at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Each customer needs a different conf.ini file and it's becoming
> >>> unmanageable to keep it locally. We are looking to streamline the
> >> building
> >>> process.
> >>>
> >>> Our current thoughts: create an web app API that will take input for
> >>> conf.ini, then call WiX tools (candle, light) and return the MSI
> package.
> >>> Our preference is to build web apps on Linux. We've tried to deploy
> >> django
> >>> apps on Windows before: it's a huge pain and unsupported.
> >>>
> >>> Has anyone built a WiX environment on Linux? Any other thoughts on how
> to
> >>> do this, architecturally?
> >>>
> >>> v/r,
> >>>
> >>> Brett
> >>>
> >>> ____________________________________________________________________
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