Any experience with repackaging an install as a single MSI/EXE

[slapha]

Does anyone have any experience using a tool to convert any of the Creo suite to a single automated installation with an MSI or EXE builder?

Such as InstallShield/Admin Studio, NSIS, WIX, etc.

I'm aware of the silent scripting and multiple other options. I'm just wondering if anyone has experience using this method and if they have a preferred tool or any good/bad experiences.

Here's my experience. I started working with the installer included with Visual Studio 2010 and the InstallShield LE that came as a free offering with Visual Studio. It seemed like a great way to develop an installation with custom script locations. We wanted a click-it and forget-it solution to send to the masses.

You can set up files to be copied into specific locations. You can create shortcuts. Install registry settings. Check for prerequisites. The end result would give you a nice progress bar and your choice of defined locations or not. However, copying all of Creo Parametric into a new project was time consuming (there are other methods). Also when building it, both times I got 100% developed and ready to build it would throw an error. "Unrecoverable error", about as descriptive as java nullpointer, and the solutions given didn't work so we ended up scrapping everything and going back to Robocopy scripts. We're also looking at the executable zip but there are still limitations.

I'm also looking at the more Pro versions of InstallShield and their competitors to evaluate developing better installs. They seem to have better functionality but I'd also hate to have our company dish out a thousand dollars only to get to the end and get some similar error. Though, I'd at least have support then.

Thoughts, Experiences?

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[Vasile_Jichin]

Hi Have you used repackager from Flexera Inc. ? The main problem is that with a repack you need to extend the tables (file for example and registry) to include more than 32k rows/entries and keeping in mind that creo has about 47k files it is a little bit hard to repack. You need to know how to extend the tables length, depth, so that your build will include all the files registries and no error will occur.

If you'd like an easier solution, you could use a silent install script. I never tried to repack these kind of applications...Feel free to comment.

[slapha]

I haven't used the repackager function from Flexera. I've used their installshield lite that comes with Visual Studio but ran into issues which were possibly due to the number of files.Today we use batch copy and then run the registry settings. We were put off by the silent install only because it had some issues early on but may revisit it in Creo 3.

[Vasile_Jichin]

Well if it helps you it may be another solution, after isolating all the prerequisites ... VCRedists, Runtimes etc, extracted from source at runtime and other application components (like Creo Thumbnail Viewer, Creo Platform 2.x etc) you could try a wrapper that installs the application.

You must be sure no msi will be install while the main setup.exe is installing so that is why isolation of prerequizites and additional Creo Components is necessary.

Moreover I have created a vbs outside the MSI that builds a path to the source directory and calls a batch file (batch file present in the same root as vbs and MSI files) and in the batch there is the command line to install the application with -xml params which you surely know about. In the VBS the wscript engine waits until the batch job is terminated. This is integrated with a CA inside MSI : wscript.exe "<path_to_vbs>vbsname.vbs". Same logic for uninstall, and you have the Creo installing with only a msiexec.exe /i call . This worked for Creo 2.0 M100, M110 and M120 versions.

[MartinHanak]

Steven,

did you read "Appendix F Installing the Creo Applications in Silent Mode" chapter in "Installing Creo 2.0: Creo Parametric, Creo Direct, Creo Layout, and Creo Simulate" guide ?

Follow therse links:

https://support.ptc.com/view?im_dbkey=138510

http://support.ptc.com/WCMS/files/138510/en/creo_2_M120_install.pdf

Martin Hanak

[slapha]

Yes, I know the first build didn't have silent installation, and after they added it they had some issues with it not running properly. I'm sure it's fixed by now we just decided to keep using what we had been using with just some tweaks.

We also have an ability to use MSI's with our IT group to make installations available without Elevated Privileges which is one reason for the push for MSI.

The MSI would also allow us to implement our custom startups as well in one process. If we use a silent install and a batch we're really not progressing far from the batches we have established. I was just wondering if anyone else had gone down that path and if they had feedback. Is it worth buying the software to do the function or not.