I would like to say right up front that I am not a programmer and dont pretend to be =) I am looking for some advice to help a young programmer that is working on a windows program for me and we are having trouble understanding which installer program to use. The program he is writing is a C++ using .NET (I hope I got that right) and we are looking for a solution that: - Can be saved as a .exe program. - Can automatically be updated by clicking on a link within the program when a new version is available. Currently, the program comes in a .msi format (which we obviously want to replace as a .exe) and to install a new version, it requires doing an Uninstall first, then double clicking on the .msi to install the newest version. Ideally, we want to be able to have a window pop up that says "New version available, click here to update to newest version" which would then download and install the newest version right over the old, and then restart. Can anyone recommend any solutions? Obviously, would prefer a free solution but will pay a small amount if necessary. Thanks in advance.
To meet your request you don't necessarily need an exe installer. msi is just fine for the job. To be able to install a new version over an old one, you need to mark the install package as an update (if you prepare the setup with Visual Studio, you keep the setup UpgradeCode the same in both versions). However, if you run the setup from within the application, it can not update the application because it is already running. To solve that you should create a separate exe that check for update and optionally runs the setup, then it runs the actual application.