Main VS wix3

Compare Main vs wix3 and see what are their differences.

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Main wix3
10 44
1,516 2,109
16.4% 1.5%
10.0 5.5
1 day ago about 1 month ago
PowerShell C#
The Unlicense GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

Main

Posts with mentions or reviews of Main. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-10-23.
  • SumatraPDF Reader
    11 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Oct 2023
  • My CNCF LFX Mentorship Spring 2023 Project at Kubescape
    19 projects | dev.to | 14 May 2023
    (merged) ScoopInstaller/Main #4757 kubescape: Update url and binary naming
  • I built a cross-platform GUI management tool for LiteDB using AvaloniaUI
    2 projects | /r/csharp | 3 Apr 2023
  • Stupid Fast Scoop Search v1.0
    18 projects | /r/rust | 29 Oct 2022
  • The scoop on Windows running Perl
    1 project | /r/perl | 28 Oct 2022
  • In support of single binary executable packages
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Mar 2022
    As I see it, part of the drive behind tools like Scoop is to overcome the limitations of the binary-shipping strategy common to Windows developers. They are successful at this, I agree, but only partially successful. They come from the tradition of programs like Ninite, which were explicitly built as ways to make the binary approach suck less than it did before.

    I see the success of these programs as essentially stemming from the insertion of user interests in the form of a maintainer-like process. Sure, they're still working with the binaries, but the actual process of installing and managing these binaries is controlled by users, for users: https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/Main/tree/master/bucket

    This means that you get moderation and in many cases modification to the behavior of the program. In a freeware environment like Windows that's full of shitware, at the very least you can in many cases strip out the ads. That's absolutely not nothing, but at the end of the day it comes from a group of user-maintainers stepping up and saying to developers that no, you cannot simply do whatever you want on my system with your software. That's ... sort of the whole point of a software distribution, in the Linux world!

    When I want the latest version of a CLI tool on Linux, I simply `pacman -S package`. That's it; one command. I don't see how it could be any simpler or better than that, and on top of that I'm getting the benefits of moderation and integration with the rest of my system. Perhaps you are emphasizing latest version here, and hinting that you don't get that on Linux distros? That depends entirely on the distro; a software distribution is (roughly) a collection of user interests. An Arch user wants (and gets) the latest versions of all upstream software. A Debian user does not want this or see constant updating to the latest version as an advantage, so that's not what they get.

  • AVR GCC Toolchain - Setup for Windows
    3 projects | /r/embedded | 20 Jan 2022
    Here is the definition: https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/Main/blob/master/bucket/avr-gcc.json
  • WinGet is terrible. I want AppGet back
    19 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Apr 2021
    Those are all automated by the auto-update script.

    Check Merged PRs https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/Main/pulls?q=is%3Apr+sort%... and you will see that the last non-bot one was merged 17 days ago.

wix3

Posts with mentions or reviews of wix3. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-05.
  • Twenty years maintaining the WiX Toolset
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Apr 2024
    For those like me (I never used Windows) who do not know WiX; https://wixtoolset.org/.
  • Creating a windows service application
    1 project | /r/cprogramming | 31 May 2023
    I don't do Windows installers myself, but I hear WiX is popular: https://wixtoolset.org/
  • Win32 App Isolation
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 May 2023
    I actually like WiX[1] — it has a bit of a learning curve, but, so long as I'm building on Windows and don't stray far from the default UI flows, I haven't found an easier tool for creating Windows installers as part of a product build process, especially those that require Windows-specific bits like COM component registration, Windows service management, setting restrictive ACLs on installed components, etc.

    And while I'm not aware of any way to sandbox Windows Installer itself, I'm curious if AppContainer isolation can be applied to applications and services installed via MSI, which would still be quite useful even if the installation process itself is unrestricted.

    Alternatively, now that MSIX supports service installation[2], I wonder whether an MSIX including a Windows service and a collection of client applications can be configured so everything runs within one AppContainer, isolated from the rest of the system, and whether permission to access specific external directories chosen by users in a configuration GUI can be transparently (to the user) delegated to the related service.

    Alas, none of this is useful to me until it's compatible with at least the most recent version of Windows 10, as very few of my customers are running Windows 11, and I suspect many won't upgrade until Windows 10 is no longer supported (optimistically; as of last year, I was still getting occasional support requests from customers running older versions of our software on Windows Server 2003 R2).

    [1] https://wixtoolset.org

    [2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/supported-pla...

  • [Windows] Looking for open source program made to install other archived programs and create uninstaller for them
    1 project | /r/sysadmin | 26 Mar 2023
  • packaging games
    1 project | /r/gamedev | 23 Mar 2023
    For Windows, in the past, I’ve used the WiX toolset to create installers (https://wixtoolset.org/).
  • Can I publish and release a .NET Service with an installation executable on GitHub?
    3 projects | /r/dotnet | 21 Mar 2023
    https://wixtoolset.org/ should be able to help you out there.
  • How to slipstream NVMe drivers into Windows 7 ISO [Tutorial]
    2 projects | /r/windows7 | 14 Feb 2023
    Wix toolset to extract .exe to get the driver or .msi https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix3/releases
  • Production C++ software guide
    1 project | /r/cpp_questions | 31 Jan 2023
    For windows - store: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-store/register/ - requirements: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/publish/publish-your-app/app-package-requirements?pivots=store-installer-msix - alternatively you can make MSIs and distribute them through your own website or another service. https://wixtoolset.org/ - publishing with chocolatey isn't a terrible option to help users with upgrade/installation automation. https://community.chocolatey.org/packages
  • ReactOS
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Jan 2023
  • tools for creating installers
    1 project | /r/devops | 18 Jan 2023
    https://wixtoolset.org/ Dont need anything else :)

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Main and wix3 you can also consider the following projects:

DalamudPlugins - This repository hosts plugins for XIVLauncher/Dalamud

winsparkle - App update framework for Windows, inspired by Sparkle for macOS

Shovel-Ash258 - Personal Shovel bucket with a wide variety of applications of all kinds.

wixsharp - Framework for building a complete MSI or WiX source code by using script files written with C# syntax.

rust-opendingux-test - OpenGL on RG350M demo

NetSparkle - NetSparkle is a C# cross-platform software update framework for .NET developers compatible with .NET 4.6.2/.NET 6+, WinForms, WPF, and Avalonia; uses Ed25519 or DSA signatures! View basic usage here in the README or visit our website for code docs.

Scoop - A command-line installer for Windows.

BruteShark - Network Analysis Tool

Scoop-Core - Shovel. Alternative, more advanced, and user-friendly implementation of windows command-line installer scoop.

algorand-windows-node - Algorand Node Microsoft Windows support

winget-cli - WinGet is the Windows Package Manager. This project includes a CLI (Command Line Interface), PowerShell modules, and a COM (Component Object Model) API (Application Programming Interface).

Versions - 📦 A Scoop bucket for alternative versions of apps.