Current situation
WinNUT currently uses the Visual Studio Install Projects/Visual Studio Installer Deployment/Visual Studio Setup and Deployment Projects system(s) to build an MSI-based installation package. This system is quite dated (at least as old as Visual Studio 2010), not actively supported by Microsoft and importantly not designed for continuous deployment & integration. The need arises to find a new solution.
Research
On the Visual Studio deployment documentation, the suggestions for creating a Windows desktop installer package are:
- MSI-based installer using the WiX Toolset
- MSI/exe installer packages using the Setup project system (currently in use)
- MSI/exe installer packages created using InstallShield
- Deploy using ClickOnce deployment system
InstallShield is a proprietary, closed-source and payware solution that does not seem fit for the Nutdotnet/WinNut project. That leaves ClickOnce and WiX which both appear to be decent candidates. WiX and ClickOnce are modern solutions with CI/CD integrations. ClickOnce is already built into Visual Studio and doesn't require additional software to build, so this may be worth looking into first before WiX.
Tasks
Current situation
WinNUT currently uses the Visual Studio Install Projects/Visual Studio Installer Deployment/Visual Studio Setup and Deployment Projects system(s) to build an MSI-based installation package. This system is quite dated (at least as old as Visual Studio 2010), not actively supported by Microsoft and importantly not designed for continuous deployment & integration. The need arises to find a new solution.
Research
On the Visual Studio deployment documentation, the suggestions for creating a Windows desktop installer package are:
InstallShield is a proprietary, closed-source and payware solution that does not seem fit for the Nutdotnet/WinNut project. That leaves ClickOnce and WiX which both appear to be decent candidates. WiX and ClickOnce are modern solutions with CI/CD integrations. ClickOnce is already built into Visual Studio and doesn't require additional software to build, so this may be worth looking into first before WiX.
Tasks