Installer testing

Question

I'm wondering if anyone has any best way for automating the testing of windows installer(msi) on various machines(virtual box vm's) with potentially different hardware / software profiles and by specifying various options to the installer.

The idea is to have my code to set up a machine, run the installer,then test that certain conditions are true, finally close the machine.

Answer 1

You are talking about testing a windows installer onto different hardware and software environment:

• Windows installed as the OS
• Windows installed in a VM
• Different hardware / software profiles
• Various options specified to the installer

The first question is:

• Do you have this kind of test environment? Sound like you wanted to use a piece of software to set up a machine, run the installer, do some verification and close the machine. Do you have a farm of various testing set ups available to you?

The second question is:

• Do you have a resource management tool? When you have a farm of testing resources, it is likely this farm is shared between different teams. Your code needs to check if a particular testing set up is available before you can run your installer on it.

The last question is:

• Write your code, do some thing like copying your installer onto a testing set up if it is free, remotely execute it, verify its conditions and close the machine.

I can not provide you with specifics as there is not much information to work on.