Some Free MSI Tools

As a professional "Setup Author" ( LOL ), I am always looking for (or writing) tools that will make my job easier. And I know that other packagers do the same so I thought that I would put together a list of tools I find useful or interesting in the setup authoring realm.

1. MSI 4.5 SDK -This is primarily useful for packagers because it contains the newest version of Orca (see next entry). But it also contains Msival2, and several other useful tools for packaging.
2. Orca - Allows direct editing of the MSI tables.
   
3. SuperOrca - This is an Orca like tool for editing MSI's
4. .MSI Diff - Compare two .MSI files and view a report of their differences.
5. MSIX - Extracts transforms and binary streams from Windows Installer files (msp, mst, msi)
6. WiX - Windows Installer XML, the first Microsoft Open Source project. WiX allows you to create your Installer via an XML dialect. There are several useful tools included in this toolset.
7. CabSDK - Can be used to create cab files.
8. Windows Installer Command Line Builder - Allows you to build command line parameters for Windows Installer.
9. Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 - Allows you to create separate virtual machines on your Windows desktop

I will continue add to this entry as I have time.

Note: this post was edited and updated on 11/05/08
Note: this post was edited and updated on 02/04/09