Good Installer / Setup software for packaging Pocketpc apps?

[n. Smith]

Anyone got any suggestions for good Installation / Setup builders?

-N

 

[Peter Foot [MVP]]

There are a number of options, if you product consists of a single cab file
(or multiple cpu versions of the same cab file) you can use ezsetup
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/ezsetup/?en

There are several other installers which can be used such as Nullsoft's
NSIS:-
http://blog.opennetcf.org/pfoot/PermaLink.aspx?guid=0e1fd92d-9efb-4c9e-9c10-506b10cf9afe

And even a windows installer package from Visual Studio using some custom
code:-
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetcomp/html/netcfdepl.asp

Peter

 

[n. Smith]

Wow!

Peter, thanks for the heads up on EzSetup!

I've just tried it out and it is great. simple to use, clean.

Thanks a lot!

-N

 

[James Neave]

I use the VS2K3 Setup projects to deploy my CABs onto a dektop machine
along with little EXEs and SETUP.INIs to launch CeAppMgr and push them
onto the WinCE device. Also puts shortcuts in the Start Menu.

I use CE Cab Manager to discover and check the syntax of CabWiz's
*.inf files.
I write the infs by hand (at the moment, hope to write code to do it
soon) and have a seperate project that builds after the main project
and has a pre-build event (Build the cabs batch file). This was, a
release build of the project automatically spits out a great big MSI
file ready for shipment.

It's kinda hard work to maintain (lots of hardcoded paths in the inf
and batch files), but it means I can crank out a release pretty
quickly. Again, hopefully I will be able to turn my dummy seperate
project into a bat/inf/cab builder one day.

Regards,

James N.

 

[Ken]

I use Windows Installer XML (WiX), from Microsoft.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/

I chose this route because we use an automated build system, and because the
XML API was a lot easier for to work with the MSI API versus tinkering with
Orca or Installshield. I just tack on a CustomAction for running InstallUtil
to get my CAB files installed on the mobile device. I wouldn't say it's as
easy as NSIS or xcopy, but you do get a nice Windows Installer package.

Ken

 

[n. Smith]

Thanks to James and Ken for the other suggestions. I'm not doing any
in-house development, just small shareware apps, so I think a setup
system like EZSetup (freeware from spb) is ideal. Thanks again to
peter for that.

-N