Free software for Windows installers: NSIS vs. WiX

Question

I'm need to choose a software package for installing software. NSIS and WiX seem promising. Which one would you recommend over the other and why?

Feel free to offer something else if you think it's better than these two.

Answer 1

NSIS will give you an exe, WiX will give you a MSI.

I have used NSIS to package up a couple MSI installers into a single exe and do some additional checking I couldn't figure out how to do using the VS.NET Setup project.

INNO Setup is another installer you may want to look at. It is closer to NSIS than WiX but the installers it makes look more like standard installers than NSIS installers do.

I did not use WiX because I did not like the XML definition language used to build the installer and I couldn't figure out if it supported packaging up other dependent MSIs

Of the three I liked NSIS best as it had the best documentation.

Answer 2

This is pretty much a duplicate of *What is the best choice for building Windows installers, so I suggest you check out the many, many answers over there (there's some discussion of the commercial alternatives there too).

The question you need to ask yourself is: Do I need to be compatible with corporate deployment scenarios for SMS/Active Directory deployment? If the answer is yes, then learn the MSI fundementals.

If you want to ship an application that's really just for fun or doesn't need to be supported on a corporate environment and you're not wanting to spend lots of time getting up to speed then learn NSIS.