Question

I am surprised I could not find this question already asked, so if I simply missed it please notify promptly.

I need to write a very small, fairly simple application in .NET that will be downloaded by end-consumers and installed on their system. Silverlight’s sandbox model will not work – it has to be a full-on downloaded, installed executable.

Here’s what I know:

• I’ve developed applications which run in a controlled desktop environment – for example, an IT app that runs on a hundred internal computers.
• I’ve developed applications using Mono

What I do not know:

• How to create a flexible, robust installer that will work on a myriad of uncontrolled desktop configurations and environments.
• How to do the same with Mono targeted for Mac OSX.
• What are the common issues in installing a widely-distributed end-user application and how to mitigate them?

I am looking for the best resources to fill in my knowledge gaps.

Related

Equivalent of a Windows Service on OSX with Mono

Answer 1

For Windows, consider Windows Installer XML (WiX). For OSX, you need to generate a .app bundle. Here is an example using the nant tasks included with the Monobjc project.

Here are some of the major issues you will face:

On Windows:

• Your installer will have to detect
  previous/old versions and
  close/uninstall/migrate as
  appropriate. Both NSIS and WiX have
  mechanisms for this.
• Your installer/app will have to be
  compatible with different versions of
  Windows (XP, Vista, 7), and different
  versions of .NET (2.0, 3.0, 3.5
  eventually). Actually testing this is
  one of the more tedious tasks you
  face. I strongly recommend having a
  handful of clean virtual machine
  images around for this.

On OSX:

• You will most likely want to ship a standalone application bundle, meaning mono will be bundled within your .app. This will add ~50mb to your distributable.
• You will have to reference different versions of Monobjc to support OSX 10.4 and 10.5, you will need to configure your build to do this, as well as test both versions.
• Make sure that your c# code isn’t using Windows/.NET specific calls by running the Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA) on your codebase.

Upgrading:

You haven’t mentioned how you plan to offer upgrades. NSIS and WiX have the capability to handle upgrades. Make sure you have your build versioning scheme worked out before your deploy the initial version. On OSX, Monobjc can integrate with Sparkle.