Hi
Why since 0.9.2 there are no more .MSI installer packages?
We need the .MSI file in order to distribute PDFCreator with a GPO through an Active Directory with more than 500 clients!!!
Now we are migrating to Windows 7 and the 0.9.1 will not work!!!!!!
We want continue using PDFCreator, but the .MSI package is necessary...
Developers, please, help us!
Regards
I agree, we are forced to throw out the PDF Creator soon if it is not emitted as an *.msi.
It is sad because PDF Creator is a nice application.
Why is *.msi installation package not available any more?
Since some 0.9.x version there is no *.msi installation package available
which makes PDFCreator very difficult to deploy in business environment.
We still use old version because it is hard to install *.exe on tens to hundreds of PCs.
Why was *.msi package removed?
Is there any plan to offer it again?
pdfforge.org/forum/open-discussion/5549-how-deploy-pdfcreator-10-gpo
Hope this helps.
What Mr. Philip says about repackaged MSI's is true, but only assuming that the developer does not do anything else, and the result of the repackaging is the final result. In this case, repackaging was nothing but the starting point, followed by many hours of work, and it looks like Mr. Philip is not very familiar with that 2nd part of the process. This is especially obvious looking at all the nonsense (sorry) in the second paragraph of the most recent post. In my company, we install quite a number of installations I created, many were repackaged, and many are more complex than PDFCreator - Adobe Reader and Microsoft Access Runtime come to mind. We never had problems with any, for years, deployed on dozens of workstations. One of them, by the way, is PDF995, very similar product, made years ago.
So, even though I take this "It is simply impossible to incorporate everything we have done just within a week" as a complement (though as I said, I did not implement all the features, and indeed, it won't work on non-NT platforms), still, publishing opinions and predictions about the installation one did not even see does not look very professional to me.
http://www.pdfforge.org/forum/open-discussion/6880-msi-installation
Hello,
I can understand your anger, but creating an MSI installation is not easy at all. Surely, wrap an exe setup into an MSI package is very easy, but all system admins would curse us for such a thing.
So we need to redevelop the whole setup, which includes printer setup, proper upgrade paths, a clean uninstall and of course dealing with old installations.
We have started working on the MSI installer, but it is a rather large task.
Solutions like the captured setup repackaged to MSI will probably work on some, maybe even many machines, but it will most likely fail on others or even break the whole system. PDFCreator setup deals with many different OS versions and installed libraries, which can't be covered in the repackaged setup. So we strongly discourage using this.
kind regards,
Philip
I happen to be the end user who asked the developer for this.
It's not just a wrapper round your exe file - even I managed to do that.
It's a proper MSI and you're scaremongering by saying it will break systems.
It's a very good msi and I'll be implementing it in my network.
You say that creating the msi is not easy, however the gentleman in question spent his own personal time developing this, and it was done in under a week. It cannot be that difficult. Even if it were the initial request for an msi was made quite some time ago, and folk havesaid they offered to get involved with it. They claim to have had no response. Being open source I would have thought you'd be desperate for help.
PDF creator is a great utility. Some are happpy to use the software without paying but many people have contributed towards costs. Some of these contributors feel disappointed at the pace of developing the installer. I think however that they are more dissappointed that the developers dont seem willing to respond for information or offers of assistance.
I just have to disagree. As far as it is told on the site of the creator of the MSI package, it is not a developed installer. It was made by capturing the actions done during the installation of our setup. As we do special actions on various occasions, this can't cover everything (and I do not mean the user interface, but the installed components) our installer does. It is simply impossible to incorporate everything we have done just within a week.
An installer that is done by capturing has some very firm assumptions: You will have to install on very similar machines. If it is captured on Windows 7, you most likely can't install it on XP and vice versa. Also, if the VB runtimes were installed and they aren't on another machine, PDFCreator won't work. Also we test our installers on different machines from very old Windows versions to most actual and also server and terminal server editions.
So I am sorry to say so, but I still can't recommend using such an installer.
Of course we know that people hope for a working MSI installer to appear soon, but this one will most likely work on your machines and most likely on machines, that are similar, but can cause big trouble with others.
And once again, I'd stress the point that end users are pretty cheesed off with the lack of progress on this matter. You dont really keep them up todate at all. Just vaery occasional vague comments.
Folk have donated money, folk have offered help also. The development of what people consider a hugely important feature just constantly seems to take a back seat.