New Setup/Installer Build System Research #85
Description
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
- Define current situation, problems and need
- Preliminary research on available options
- Explore ClickOnce integration with current solution, determine if viable over WiX.
- Consider building old Setup project by Action again (Release Building #81)