为适用于多种环境的ASP.NET Web APP创建安装程序

Question

I have created an ASP.NET website which accesses a DB. The DB can will be alrady installed at target machine. It can be anything from SQL server 2000 to SQL server 2008. Further more the target OS can be anything from Windows server 2000 to Windows 7. I have kept the target .Net framework version as .Net 2.0 to keep matters simple. Also, the target machine can be x86 or x64 or Itanium.

1. Do I need to create separate builds for different target platforms?
2. How do I create an Installer which will :
1. Put this website on a Virtual Directory of IIS server(can be any IIS version)
2. Detect the target platform and install the appropriate build

I need to do this either using the standard MSI installer of VS2008 or using WiX or any open source installer for that matter. Please help me with this since I am new to deployment projects.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use softwares like InstallShield in order to create your installer. but InstallShield is not for free I think.
such programs have their own scripting language that simplify the operations that you want to do, like detecting which operating system is installed or which SQL Server version is installer, beside that they allows you to communicate with a certain function in a dll. You can call this function to do some logic or some validation.

Answer 2

You can use WiX to create an MSI that does what you've listed. It is free, and as well as including functionality for what you want also allows custom scripting for any custom logic needed.