wix3 VS winsparkle

For those like me (I never used Windows) who do not know WiX; https://wixtoolset.org/.

I don't do Windows installers myself, but I hear WiX is popular: https://wixtoolset.org/

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...

For Windows, in the past, I’ve used the WiX toolset to create installers (https://wixtoolset.org/).

https://wixtoolset.org/ should be able to help you out there.

Wix toolset to extract .exe to get the driver or .msi https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix3/releases

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

https://wixtoolset.org/ Dont need anything else :)

There is one that is .NET and cross platform (incl. Linux) here: https://github.com/NetSparkleUpdater/NetSparkle (disclaimer: I am the primary maintainer of this repository).

For C++, WinSparkle works too: https://github.com/vslavik/winsparkle/

Yeah they’ve been gaining a lot of momentum from the refactor. We were using WinSparkle for awhile but it still only supports DSA signatures and required maintaining some P/Invoke code.