Can someone advice me why it's more advisable to use Web Deployment Package over all known MSI packages .
What advantages it can bring me when I will use them.
Thanks
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3 Answers
Similar debate to ClickOnce vs MSI discussions. At the end of the day, you can do pretty much everything with MSI (even if it means using custom actions), than you can do with Web deployment package. On the other hand, Web dep. pack. is nicely integrated to Visual Studio and gives you minimal headache while creating packages. It's all about ease of use.
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I agreed with the accepted answer but wanted to provide additional prospective.
I have the MSI experience the be able to crank out a multiple instance MSI that supports WebUI/WebApp deployments in a matter of an hour and make it easily maintainable. But, I also recognize that it took a lot of knowledge and experience to get to this point and that for most newcomers to MSI the task is absolutely huge.
I also recognize that to many web developers they won't even try. They will use some powershell to xcopy content and configure IIS without a rich packaged user story.
Web Deployment is meant to be a replacement solution that focuses on single user story rather then the general case.
answered Feb 26, 2012 at 14:09
Christopher Painter
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Uwe Keim
Wix or WixSharp makes it a little bit easier to dive into MSI.
Christopher Painter
@Uwe Keim : Compared to what? Authoring in ORCA?
Uwe Keim
Don't know; I had tried different tools to create MSI (including VS.NET) and found that WixSharp is still a pain to use, but the results are the best ones I've ever produces.
Web Deployment packages, and MSDEPLOY in general, are also integrated with IIS itself. You can deploy a package by using the "Import" command on the site context menu, and create a package by using "Export".
They are also very flexible and can deploy more than the web site. They can also deploy .NET assemblies to the GAC, and COM objects can be registered during deployment. The packages can be parameterized so that one package can be deployed to multiple environments by changing the parameters at deployment time.
