Measurement Studio 2015 Installer Creator vs WIX

[dearman]

What was the reasoning behind developing the new Measurement Studio Installer feature?  I have never had any issue using Wix for deploying mixed C#, C++ products which use Measurement Studio.  It just seems like a strange direction to send development resources, as opossed to say, improving the WPF support?  Or the product documentation and samples for WPF? 

Mark DeArman

[TheCaptain]

Mark,

As I understand it, the installer builder was given development time to ensure that we had a deployment tool that was guaranteed to work with MS; WiX and the other 3rd-party installer builders often had issues when attempting to build installers using MS components. You may not have experienced these issues yourself, but rest assured: they occurred.

[D-Cubed · Accepted solution]

Hi, Mark

The reasons we dedicated development resources into creating an installer builder application for Measurement Studio are as follows:
1. After Visual Studio dropped support for their native Setup project, the number of support requests involving Measurement Studio deployment increased dramatically.
2. Aside from the Setup project, the only other deployment method Measurement Studio fully supports is Windows Installer XML (WiX) which was not well-received by customers. While powerful, WiX has a steep learning curve, even to accomplish a simple deployment.
3. Measurement Studio does not support InstallShield, among other popular WiX alternatives, for deployment.
4. None of the supported deployment methods guide customers on what NI drivers and components to include with their application to ensure proper run time behavior.

Installer Builder helps solve these challenges, and has already received a lot positive feedback from customers.

Please let us know if you have any other questions about Installer Builder; we would be happy to help!

Thanks,

[dearman]

Thanks for the quick response.  I'm not part of the Beta program anymore, and I was a little blind sided by the release notes when they arived.

Hopefully this week we'll get 2015 installed and check out this new accelerated graphing.... 

[FrankTore]

I wonder, is wix still supported in MStudio 2015?

I can't find any merge files matching the new libraries.

Am I supposed to scrap my precious wix setup project and start from scratch with the mstudio installer?

Best rgds,

Frank

[D-Cubed]

Hi Frank,

WiX is still supported as a deployment option, but NI is not recommending it starting in Measurement Studio 2015 because Measurement Studio 2015 has provided Installer Builder. NI recommends that you create installers for new projects using Measurement Studio Installer Builder and NI Runtime Installers (Drivers & Components Tab)

Can you explain what you mean when you say you cannot find merge files matching the new libraries? Are you saying that when you open a merge module in an editor like Orca, the files listed do not match your Measurement Studio 2015 libraries?

Thanks,

[FrankTore]

Hi Daniel,

I can't locate the merge files. It also appears that some previous merge files, e.g. "MStudioEnterpriseAnalysis.2012.msm", have dissappeared from the "Merge Modules" folder after installing MStudio 2015.

[D-Cubed]

Hi Frank,

Please see this KB, which describes how to resolve this issue: digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/52003B0C6C29B3F386257E650054929D

Please let us know if this does not resolve the issue.

Thanks,

[FrankTore]

The repair worked fine. Reovered around 20 missing files to the merge module folder.

I appreciate your efforts in making a proper installer, but it seems to be lacking some trivial features yet, such as allowing more complex application directory hierarchies. Since I already have a good WiX solution I will stick with this for the time being as I already spent much time in tailoring it to my satisfaction.

Thanks for the quick and efficient support.

Best rgds,

Frank

[dearman]

Frank, I have to agree.  I would have rather WiX get adopted as the official deployment solution.  We wont be changing over.