New Setup/Installer Build System

[gbakeman]

Current situation

WinNUT currently uses the Visual Studio Install Projects/Visual Studio Installer Deployment system to build an MSI-based installation package. This system is quite dated (at least as old as Visual Studio 2010), not actively supported by Microsoft and importantly not designed for continuous deployment & integration. The need arises to find a new solution.

Research

On the Visual Studio deployment documentation, the suggestions for creating a Windows desktop installer package are:

• MSI-based installer using the WiX Toolset
• MSI/exe installer packages using the Setup project system (currently in use)
• MSI/exe installer packages created using InstallShield software
• Deploy using ClickOnce deployment system

InstallShield is a proprietary, closed-source and payware solution that does not seem fit for the Nutdotnet/WinNut project. That leaves ClickOnce and WiX which both appear to be decent candidates. WiX and ClickOnce are modern solutions with CI/CD integrations. ClickOnce is already built into Visual Studio and doesn't require additional software to build, so this may be worth looking into first before WiX.

ClickOnce

• Access local and remote data in ClickOnce applications
  • Migrate data storage
• ClickOnce and application settings
  • Take advantage of app settings
• Localize ClickOnce applications
  • Consider impacts of translations
• ClickOnce and Authenticode
  • Skipping for now due to complication. Will reconsider if necessary.
• Choose a ClickOnce update strategy
  • Remove custom updater and use ClickOnce built-in updating
  • Alternatively: keep custom updater, but use GitHub library to fetch update information.

Tasks

• Explore ClickOnce integration with current solution, determine if viable over WiX.
• After production deployment, modify the WinNUT client to support gracefully transitioning from the old MSI system to the new ClickOnce system
• Fix gh-pages publish step has broken git message: "Update to "

Test Installation Pathways

• Nothing -> ClickOnce
• MSI -> ClickOnce
• ClickOnce -> ClickOnce

See also

• Release Building #81
• EV Certificate signing #84
• WinNUT won't run after Windows 11 update #206 (comment)
  • Experience with the old installer. Want to make sure it installs quickly, and can handle a running WinNUT instance.