ISWIX, LLC View Christopher Painter's profile on LinkedIn profile for Christopher Painter at Stack Overflow, Q&A for professional and enthusiast programmers

August 30, 2011

Tales of Setup Democratization

At my last job, the .NET developers and InstallShield developers embarked on a collaboration excercise that we called 'setup democratization'.  We used a blend of InstallShield and Windows Installer XML.   Most developers used Industrial Strength Windows Installer XML ( IsWiX ) to author their WiX code.

I've asked my former colleagues to post their observations.  Let's see what candid and anonymous comments they have to share.

2 comments:

Erin said...

My intent is not to hijack this thread, so please let me know if this is not appropriate for this post. I am a deployment engineer and often work with the .NET developers and architects in our company. There is a disconnect between designing/developing the applications and deploying them. What I am struggling with is how do I get people that think installs 'just copy files' to understand that there are design decisions they could make that would make deployment easier and cleaner. Do you have any suggestions? References? I appreciate any help. Thanks!

Christopher Painter said...

I have experience promoting the types of changes that you talk about and yes, it's difficult to get traction. It can be downright impossible depending on the culture where you work.

I'm starting to think that I was too hopeful in making this post because my engagement rate in attempting to gather opinions seems to be zero.