Automatic Deployment Resources

Question

I know enough to know that we need to get our application to deploy with a single user action. However, I don\'t know:

1. What are some good tools to

Answer 1

We've had great success with Windows Installer XML. Basically, you define the components that make up your application in XML and WiX turns that into an MSI package. Documentation is relatively sparse, but the provided CHM file combined with search fu will get you a long way there.

The MSI packages can take input parameters for configuration values and perform actions to manipulate configuration files after the application has been deployed. For example, "msiexec /i MyCustomPackage.msi SqlServer=SomeSQLBox" could deploy the web application and modify the configuration entry for a dependent SQL box.