Guest View: Why is Software Installation Still Such a Mess?

By Bob Kelly

April 15, 2008 —  (Page 1 of 4)
The creation of a setup routine is far too often an afterthought given little attention by software vendors: A setup that just installs the software and “gets the job done” is not enough.

There are a growing number of organizations trying to manage software configurations through the use of automated software installations. Among other things, this helps ensure that software is installed the same way on all systems, which can reduce support costs. For these organizations, the automated deployment of software is the only authorized means of software delivery. As a result, the task of installing software may be far more challenging than answering “next, next, next” in an installation wizard.

A setup can be written to perform any number of changes that may or may not be known to us—changes that may well be undesirable in a managed environment. It seemed like Windows Installer (MSI setup) was going to solve this problem to a large degree. Microsoft introduced Windows Installer with the release of Office 2000 several years ago as a well-structured standard to be leveraged by all.

In fact, Microsoft went so far as to make its use a requirement for Windows logo certification. It is powerful, well documented and includes many features important to administrators including logging, rollback, repair, validation and command line control. But naturally with all these great features comes complexity, both in the management of Windows Installer to avoid unwanted repairs and prompts for missing network source files, as well as in the authoring of such setups.

When a setup is to simply install some files, registry entries and a shortcut, things tend to go pretty well. Add elements like hardware drivers, services, updates, and permission changes, and watch the level of complexity soar. There are plenty of helpful tools out there to author such setups, but they can still be a challenge to the uninitiated and none of these tools generate a perfect package.

So how do we define a perfect package? Microsoft included a validation feature through which a set of rules may be checked to identify several potential issues. These rules call out warnings and errors and ideally give you some confidence that the MSI setup you have before you is well written. The universally accepted set of validation rules is the Full MSI Validation Suite (darice.cub) and Windows 2000 Logo Program Suite (logo.cub). Unfortunately, no authoring tool generates a setup that does not have at least a handful of complaints from these rules. Many of the warnings and informational messages presented may be harmless, but interpreting what the problem is, and if or how it should be corrected, requires expertise. Frustratingly, Microsoft itself releases setups riddled with such warnings. If validation were a more helpful feature, it would be the goal of vendors and in-house developers to produce a setup that satisfies the rules. Some diligent administrators may attack these problems and produce a perfect package, but it is often disregarded as a lot of noise not worth pursuing.

Related Search Term(s): Microsoft

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