Jonathan Sawyer

Shhhhh its a silent MSI

Well its been about two weeks since I started my new job at the www.jamwarehouse.com so far its been very
interesting and I am gradually starting to work more on the domain specific stuff.

I have been working with an Application called SetupBuilder to generate an installation.
SetupBuilder is pretty decent but its not without bugs! A few irritating ones are when you remove/replace something and it doesnt save your
change. This can be resolved through using "Save As". I must say Friedrich Linder who wrote setup builder is very helpful and replied in person to my queries within a few minutes. Think he may have some offshore deal or something - with a whole lotta Friedrich Linders.

Late in the process it was decided we need an MSI which the version we have of setupbuilder doesnt generate.

One of the main requirements were that the application should run in silent mode.
From the command line its pretty easy you call into MSIEXEC and pass in a /q command to indicate no UI display for the installer.

etc

MSIEXEC /I mymsi.msi /q

Now this is fine and works but the only problem is that the client would like to click on the MSI and have it install silently.
Its been a while since I worked with MSI so I wipped out Orca and began to search the MSI tables in the hope of finding some silent setting

CustomAction appears to be the most likely to set it in.

Looking back over my shoulder

I recently started a new job at www.jamwarehouse.com I left an awesome environment and took a risk in the hope of continuing my personal growth and advancement within the IT industry. My previous company www.digiata.com used a complete agile methodology - with little or perhaps no variation of Kent Becks model. He does recommend that one adopts the model completely and then as your process matures you refine it until it suites your organizations needs.

Anyway I left behind some really awesome developers and it was a real privilege to be surrounded by so many intelligent people! They say you should have at least one friend who is way more intelligent than you are - well at Digiata I had like 20 ... hey whats wrong with this picture! You take a lot with you from another company and all the technical knowledge in the world can only take you so far! What I am most thankful for was a way of approaching, solving and thinking about problems! This is by far the most valuable skill within the development industry - it brought my force into balance and made me way more pragmatic.

One thing I do miss is the Americanized XP styled stand-up meetings. They are really awesome!