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If InstallShield could just die a slow (and optionally painful, if the blasted .iss file actually works) death already...
I would not be sad to see some standardization enforced here. No reason why every OEM couldn't be giving us an MSI or MSIX installer for their software at this point.
- Jason_Sandys
Microsoft
MSI has been around for 20+ years. Why vendors choose another format is something you'll have to ask them but Microsoft is not prepared to limit their choices particularly since there's no technical way we could ever limit what an EXE does anyway. Also, limiting what's in the store has not in any way lead to it actually being the first choice for vendors to publish their software. We can all agree how much better the experience would be if everyone would just standardize, but we don't feel the negative impact on the vast app ecosystem this would have is justifiable based on this alone.- Heard loud and clear. I know we're not likely to see it, but at least we have tools like MSIX that can help overcome shortcomings in the solutions that third parties provide.
- Hi Jason, I run a company that makes a packaging tool focused on cross-platform apps (electron, jvm, qt, etc). It builds MSIX packages for Windows, so I have a lot of experience with this format. There's a lot of low hanging fruit that could improve MSIX adoption significantly in my view, but Microsoft has to want it. If you'd like to discuss our experiences please reach out - mike@hydraulic.software - and I'll happily spend some time brainstorming ways to bring more vendors into the MSIX ecosystem.
- Jason_Sandys> but Microsoft has to want it Not really. Customers must want it first and all vendors and developers must also support it. Regardless of the pitfalls and shortcomings of the MSI format, the fact that it is 20+ years old and was the de facto standard for packaging software but has never achieved a majority share of the packaging activity for Windows apps is telling. In general, we'd be very happy if folks began adopting MSIX en masse and whatever you can do to help that along is appreciated by all, but that's not something we can truly force and would leave ourselves with an upset customer based if we did try.
This is about more than standardization and MSI is not the same as MSIX or APPX. Though the creators of MSI had their hearts in the right place, the moment they allowed for arbitrary code execution they broke the intended security model of a declarative installer (sound familiar?). Now, besides a little metadata and a (usually) standard CLI interface, MSI is little better than an executable. Whereas, MSIX is fully declarative, effectively sandboxing the install/uninstall. APPX goes a step further by enforcing access to Windows resources through the UWP API. Backing into the position Android, ChromeOS and iOS have had from their beginnings. "Would you like to allow this shady app access to your location and password file?"
