Hacker News Reader

Comment by Slartie | Hacker News Reader

> The only current headache is that there's no pure Rust bundler, to make ".msi" or ".msix" installer files.

I have set up a toolchain based on Wix, running via Mono and Wine on Linux, for the purpose of packaging some rather complex .msi files in a commercial software project. Has been running on the Linux-based CI servers of that project for 10 years straight now, with the only change having been that the entire chain has been packaged into a Docker container a few years ago when that became fashionable.

View on HN

WiX is great. I have been using it for over a decade to package an internal application. It's all driven by a simple text file which I liked over Microsoft's packaging offerings.

It's another example where the free tools are better than Microsoft's.

Except it's also Microsoft's.

The Windows Installer XML Toolset (WiX) is owned by Microsoft.

It's not. It's an open source project (aka owned by no one) that started at Microsoft. The person who created WiX left Microsoft to create Firegiant, which is the primary contributor to its continued development and maintenance.

Open source does not mean "owned by no one". It means the owner or owners have licenced their intellectual property to you under the terms of an oss license.

Which offerings? Are there any?

I only know about other proprietary non-MS solutions like InstallShield, which also generate .msi files but use their own proprietary way to define the installation process, with the benefit/disadvantage (depending on what you want to do specifically) of being on a higher abstraction level than WiX, which is more or less a direct resemblance of the internal Windows Installer data structures.

> I have set up a toolchain based on Wix, running via Mono and Wine on Linux, for the purpose of packaging some rather complex .msi files in a commercial software project.

That’s exactly how I rigged up building our MSIs at Tailscale.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com