Don’t Orca it, InstEd It! – MSI editing made simpler, easier and still free

InstEd - Make packaging more productive

“If you use Orca, you will love InstEd. If you use some of the more expensive tools, you may find that InstEd makes you more productive for the bread and butter packaging tasks.

InstEd is a Free msi editor built for professionals.

New release available now! Be fully prepared for Windows Installer 5.0 MSIs with the latest version of InstEd: 1.5.5.13. …

…

InstEd makes working with files fast and easy.

• Build cabs from the Media table.  Right click a Media table entry to see the files belonging to that cab, or to rebuild the cab.
• Multi-file editing using tabs. Built from the ground up to handle multiple files, everything from searching to validation can be applied to more than one file at a time.
• Easy navigation. All relationships within the database are displayed and clickable for easy navigation.
• Accurate editing. Changes to a field are optionally cascaded to all dependent fields. So, for example, renaming a component can have all references updated.
• Change highlighting. All changes to an mst are highlighted. Msi files can be compared to highlight the differences. And by comparing an msi to itself while the msi is being edited, change tracking can be performed on an msi.
• Easy validation. Validation profiles allow full flexibility to apply ICEs from more than one CUB to many files at once, allowing for easy Quality Assurance of many files at once.

…” [Page leach level: 95%]

Every time I fire up Orca my brain hurts. It’s a cool tool, don’t get me wrong, but pretty low level. (If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry… I won’t say you’re lucky… but… well… you’re lucky…lol ;) Editing MSI’s is not for the faint of heart. MSI’s are essentially databases and pretty complex ones at that. So it’s easy to get lost and/or screw up a change.

I think of Orca as kind of, sort of, like pointing Access at a big database. Lots of power and ability to change, but hard to navigate and easy to mess up the data. InstEd is still powerful in that way, but with an extra layer of sanity, help and validation provided.

The price is also just right, free…

(via Jason Haley - Interesting Finds: February 8, 2009 –> Under The Stairs - InstEd – A Replacement For Orca)

 

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