4 ms·
Uh??? It’s had one for 25 years already: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer
by jaoane 1y ago
Uh??? It’s had one for 25 years already: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer
- pjc50 1y agoMSI certainly works, but it's also a deeply insane file format and the tooling for building MSI installers was never great. Hence InstallShield etc existed.
- Kwpolska 1y agoInstallShield predates Windows Installer by about a decade.
- cruffle_duffle 1y agoIt’s funny though, because despite MSI coming into existence the problems InstallShield fix didn’t really change much.
- pjc50 1y agoYou're right, I've conflated MSI with .CAB which was used back in the floppy era.
- WorldMaker 1y agoCAB is a format like ZIP. MSIs are fun because they use CAB files under the hood. But also a database format from the Microsoft JET Engine that was an ancient predecessor to the Windows Registry and contemporary/counterpart of the Office Access format at the time. It's really interesting to compare MSI to MSIX which is ZIP/XML instead of CAB/weird JET DB file.