Installer that downloads the content after for desktop WPF Applications?

Question

Currently, i'm using the following installer: Microsoft Visual Studio Installer Projects 2022 . I've also seen the wix installer ( WIX TOOLSET ). But none of the installers i've seen has the option (at least I couldn't find in the documentation) to download the full App after you run the installer. I'm developing a self-contained WPF Desktop App that is too big, so I would like the installer to be a smaller size, and then after the user downloads the installer and runs it, then it will download all the files of my WPF App. Does anyone knows a installer for that?

Answer 1

We call that a web installer. You can probably create it with the support for Bundles in Wix , but I don't have a complete example on this so you will need to dig more if you want to use Wix Toolset. I don't know if this is supported with the Microsoft VS Installer Project.

I work on the team building Advanced Installer (disclaimer). In this article we explain how you can create a web installer with just a few clicks. First, you need a create a Professional project (this feature is not available in the Free edition) and add your files in the project.

You can skip most of the steps from the Professional tutorial linked above if you don't need them. TO test your web installer you basically need to add the files and make the configurations described in the first article, in Builds page.

If you're application is split in multiple features, it is highly recommend you enable the option "One CAB per feature" from Builds page, so the installer will only download the binaries corespondent to the features selected by the user, thus reducing the download size and speeding up the installation.