1 reply to this topic

[borland]

Hi.
Basically, I (on behalf of my work) am looking at deploying installers using MSI.
However, I'm not sure currently whether to go with just using the MSI SDK in combination with the many free tools available out there, and possibly write some of my own tools, or to go with a solution such as IS Developer.

Our current system is fairly complex and requires dynamic source paths, a lot of fairly complicated scripting etc. We are currently on IS Professional 6.3. A large amount of the complicated functions are already housed in a C++ helper DLL.

I have looked briefly at the two, and currently am leaning more towards using just the MSI SDK/tools, as this gives greater flexibility/control/and not having limitations caused by IS.
However, I have been reccommended to use IS Developer by a friend, and without devoting a large amount of time to fully learn both products, I am unsure as of what to do.

Could someone perhaps give a recommendation or strengths / weaknesses of the MSI SDK alone vs InstallShield Developer?

Thanks very much in advance.

[Stefan Krueger]

Actually, you can do anything you can do with the SDK in Developer, too, because it has a built in direct database editor similar to Orca.
However many tasks are much easier to do in Developer in my opinion. For instancane it has a dialog editor.
You could even use snippets from your existing InstallScript as a custom action if using Developer.