There are many tools available for creating and editing MSIs. Most of what
I've seen is not cheap. We use Wise (
www.wise.com), but there is also
InstallShield (
http://www.installshield.com/products/adminstudio/) and
others. You can also use something like WinInstall LE to capture
installations into .MSIs (which ships with the Win2000 Resource Kit, if I
recall correctly).
If you want to do fairly simple things, perhaps others can suggest cheap[er]
or free tools that are adequate. If you want to create complex packages,
I've found everything shy of several hundred dollars to be inadequate.
Adobe 6 reader comes with an .msi. Office / Outlook should allow you to
package the installation into an .msi via the resource kit (ORK -- such a
great name). Winzip we created with a WinInstall LE capture.
As for how the packages are actually created,
you can do before/after snapshots,
you can manually create your own .MSIs,
you can make a "thin" MSI that just calls an unattended setup script,
you can use tools to watch file and registry calls made while you are
actually running the already-installed program
(which then try to create an installation based on file/reg keys
accessed)
you can convert source code (.NET, VB, C++, etc) projects into MSI
installations
you can convert *some* Wise/InstallShield/Other(?) .exe installation
programs into MSIs
\\ MadDHatteR
Nolofinwe Melwazul said:
Hi
How to package 3rd part applications like winzip - reader - office -
outlook - and other products, not necesseraly microsoft ones ?
Which tool, and method ? before after snap ?
Thx.
