First of all what the installer should do:
- Check if .NET 4.0 is a requirement
- Unpack files
- Generate configuration for specified user
- Install windows service
- Start windows service
The only problem which I have is "3" (Generate configuration for specified user).
I found following solution:
- Create setup project
- "Decompile" msi using MSI2XML and create "template" from decompiled installer
- When user try to download installer on my site use XML2MSI to build installer package from "template"
The server-side technlogy is ASP.NET MVC (but MVC in this case probably does not matter), also I hosting my project on Azure (this is probably much bigger problem).
So my questions are:
- Can I do this in above way?
- Is there a better solution?
- Should I use WiX instead of setup project (2012 does not support setup project)?