VS Setup project or WIX

This past weekend, I was suppose to come up with an alpha installation for our upcoming software project. I thought it was going to be pretty clear cut. I just needed to do a perusing through the internet and see if there was anything outstanding that we should take into consideration.

During my investigation, I stumbled across Rob Mensching's blog entry. Following the breadcrumbs to Windows Installer Xml toolset. Hmmmm... now we have some decisions.

I downloaded and compiled it. Documentation is seriously lacking with WIX. Right - open source is cool and everything, but taking up my time is not. I took one of my library installations and converted it over to the WXS format. It was a pretty simple installation. However the XML file came to over 1900+ lines. Ouch.

A Visual Studio setup project seems to be satisfactory for our needs. Sure you can use WIX as a post build step. However, a Setup project can also be made part of the solution. I did like being able to exactly see what an installation was made of. With Visual Studio, there's a lot of hocus-pocus and with some luck it all works out fine.

After reviewing the pros and cons, we decided against WIX. I think its a commendable start but it really needs better documentation and a user interface that simplifies the creation of an installation.