xcopy deployment

[lizii]

At the moment my company have asked me to look into installations. We
use pure .NET applications and although i have looked into installer
programs (installshield...wise..etc) none of them are able to do
exactly what we want them to do - or at least not easily. So now i am
looking into the possibly of using an xcopy deployment. However - i
can find very little information about the major disadvantages of this
method.


Does anyone know of any good articles about the disadvantages (and
advantages) of xcopy deployment?



Thanks very much!

 

[Phil Wilson]

It might help to describe what you want to do. A large number of installs
aren't going to be xcopy installs anyway. You can't xcopy a shortcut to a
file on a system when you don't know where it's being installed; you can't
xcopy services, most COM servers, entries in Add/Remove Programs, a product
that clients want to install with group policy, a setup that requires UI
choices.