Building an MSI File: Visual Studio and Orca

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In this chapter, you’ll build an installer package using a VS.NET Setup and Deployment Project and look at it with a tool called Orca, part of the Windows Installer SDK. (The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer, by Phil Wilson, Apress, ISBN: 1590592972.)

Background

First, some history and an overview of VS’s capabilities in the installation area.

Microsoft has often added capabilities for building installations in VS—perhaps you’ve used the Visual Basic Package and Deployment Wizard. If you’ve used VS 6.0, you might have used the first version of Visual Studio Installer, which was available as a free download for VS licensees. VS.NET is the first release of VS that integrates the ability to build Windows Installer packages with the IDE. However, VS.NET’s installation tool comes with some limitations and restrictions that become apparent as you use it. This doesn’t mean that Microsoft did a bad job, but it does mean that if you want to use a substantial set of Windows Installer’s features, you should look beyond VS.NET’s installer tool. Look in Chapter 16 for a list of some of the vendors that supply fully featured tools to create installer packages.

One of the tools that Microsoft supplies to view and modify installer packages is called Orca. You can find it in the Windows Installer section of the Platform SDK; the installation package is (what else?) an installer package called ORCA.MSI. After you’ve installed it, you’ll find that the right-click context menu on Windows Installer files (notably packages, MSI files and merge modules, MSM files) allows you to open and edit them. You’ll be using Orca later to view and modify installation packages.

I’ll describe everything I cover here regarding Windows Installer concepts in more detail in later chapters. In this chapter, you’ll build an installer package so that you can look inside the actual MSI file; that’s when you’ll use Orca.

This is from The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer, by Phil Wilson, (Apress, ISBN: 1590592972). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today. Buy this book now.

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