268740 - Support unattended install deployment like MSI

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(SeaMonkey :: Installer, enhancement)

Description

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

The largest argument for switching to MSI has been deployment on large corporate
networks. Perhaps we could support deployment with xpinstall. Does anyone have
more information on how to support these corporate deployment tools?

In bug 52052 comment 36 Sören 'Chucker' Kuklau (gone) wrote:

The major benefit of MSI (in my point of view) is deployment. Create an MSI file
of an application, 
and in an ActiveDirectory-enabled company network (i.e. with only or mostly
Windows 2000 
clients), you can share the installation script over the whole network, making
two choices possible:

a) force computers in the group in question to install the application in
question at next reboot
b) force users in the group in question to have the computer install it at next
login
c) let users manually install it from the Software panel, adding it to the
"Install from network" 
section

These are extremely convenient ways of software deployment over a large network,
and they make 
maintenance (further updates to the app) easy as well. Also, should an
administrator decide to 
remove the app, he can tell all computers to automatically uninstall it again.

In bug 52052 comment 44 Ludovic Hirlimann wrote:

.MSI is used for silent and unatended deployment. Having an .msi packages
simplifies the persons in charge of corpoarte desktop deployment. Thus when they
tell their managment that moving to mozilla will only cost XX days.The smaller
XX the better will management let the product be deployed on desktops env.
As of today, you can use whatever technlogy you want to deploy, but most
solutions out there support .msi out of the box meaning that desktops
administrators will likely have a small XX number because they don't need to
repackages the product into their deployment tool.

We are not saying .msi is the only solution and will solve everything, the point
is having an .msi file will help the aceptance of mozilla.org's product on the
corporate desktop.

In bug 52052 comment 39 Daniel Glazman wrote:

In a former professionnal life, I used to work for the french national electricity
provider. 140,000 users everywhere in France, including overseas territories. A
real mess in terms of deployment without MSI. Much easier with it.

I agree FULLY with [bug 52052 comment 36], MSI allows teledistribution of a
package through
the normal Microsoft channels. It's a VERY important point/feature for big
corporate users. Saying that MSI's pointless shows just a total ignorance of the
market of big MSFTWindows-based corporate users.

I __STRONGLY__ recommend reopening the current bug and setting the radar to
Future if noone wants to take it right now. But closing it as WONTFIX goes too
far from my personal perspective. Just my 2 eurocents.

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

Firefox already has a bug-request for this : bug 231062

Comment 2

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

This bug is about supporting the deployment features within xpinstall as an
alternative to using .msi and without the use of .msi. I just suggested one way
to do this would perhaps be to wrap the xpinstall setup program in an .msi
script as a temporary solution for corporate users, not as the final solution by
any means. That would not make this bug fixed, but just provide a temporary
workaround.

I reiterate that this bug is not about using MSI and it's for xpinstall, not
Firefox's installer.

Comment 3

[Robert Kaiser]

MASS-CHANGE:
This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 4

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

.msi is the way to deploy easily in the enterprise where people use tools to achive that. Most of the tools are based around the msi format.

Comment 5

[Robert Kaiser]

There are no plans for supporting MSI in SeaMonkey right now.

Comment 6

[Robert Kaiser]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I reiterate that this bug is not about using MSI and it's for xpinstall, not
> Firefox's installer.

Old XPFE installer is dead now with the end of life for SeaMonkey 1.x, and we're using the same installer as Firefox now, so according to that cited comment, that bug isn't relevant any more.