InstallSite Blog

False Positives in Windows 7’s Installer Detection

2009-06-24T15:18:28Z

When User Account Control (UAC ) was introduced in Windows Vista it would have caused problems for many existing setups because they required full administrator permissions. Therefore Microsoft added heuristical detection for installers. For instance if it detects a keyword like “setup” or “installer” in the exe file name or in the resources it assumes that this is a setup program and displays the UAC prompt to elevate the program to the full administrator token. This can however cause problems if your program actually isn’t a setup but is falsely identified as one by the installer heuristic (“false positive”). To avoid this you could add a manifest to your application to tell Windows Vista that it’s not a setup.

Windows 7 has similar functionality, but it ignores the information you put in the manifest for Windows Vista – you have to add another piece of data especially for Windows 7. Chris Jackson, who is an Architect and the Technical Lead for the Windows Application Experience SWAT Team, blogged about this problem, and a possible fix.

PCA Changes for Windows 7: How To Tell Us You are Not an Installer, Take 2 (because we changed the rules on you)

InstallShield 2010 Released

2009-06-19T11:55:14Z

(Updated to fix broken hyperlinks)

On October 18, 2009 Acresso released the latest version of their setup authoring tool InstallShield, which reportedly is used by over 71,000 ISVs and enterprises to create installers for Windows and mobile devices.

What's new in InstallShield 2010

Supports Microsoft App-V with new InstallShield Virtualization Pack - in addition to Windows Installer (MSI) and proprietary InstallScripts, developers can now create virtual application packages for Microsoft App-V (formerly Softgrid)
New Microsoft technologies supported natively in InstallShield – InstallShield 2010 supports Windows 7 and MSI 5 features so developers can use them now on Windows XP and Vista platforms. It also has support for Windows Server 2008 R2.
Improved support for Web applications – Expanded IIS features now include all IIS 7 settings.
IDE usability improvements – New flattened architecture and dynamic and global searching significantly increase developer productivity. Developers can spend 10 minutes to learn the new IDE and then benefit from significant time saved on daily tasks.
More options for runtime user-experience customization – ISVs have more customization options to create user experience and branding with new support for billboards, Flash, HTML, and hyperlinks. New branding options can help ISVs up/cross-sell their software by adding more user interaction through the installation process.
Better support for multi-language installation – InstallShield now supports Unicode. Also developers will save significant time by having a single view of all languages with dynamic searching and replacing global settings at once.
plus over 400 new and enhanced features from customer requests

Detailed information can be found in the datasheet and in the release notes:

If you’re in Europe you can buy InstallShield 2010 from the InstallSite Shop.

Changes in Activation Process and EULA

Changes in the End User License Agreement (EULA) and in the activation process include:

Licenses can now be “de-activated” manually, even offline.
Activation needs to be repeated on a yearly basis.
Using InstallShield in a virtual machine is now allowed.

I have created a side-by-side comparison of the old and the new EULA and a summary of the changes in the activation process. For full details please read Acresso’s official documents:

InstallShield 2010 EULA (PDF)
InstallShield Activation User Guide (PDF)

End of Life announced for InstallShield 12 and InstallAnywhere 8

Together with the release of InstallShield 2010 Acresso also announced the end of life for InstallShield 12 and InstallAnywhere 8 (all language editions). This means that you can upgrade from these versions only until October 30, 2009. After that date you would have to pay the full license price.

October 31, 2009 is the deadline for the following product versions:

InstallShield 12 (all languages)
InstallShield 2008 German
InstallShield 2009 German
InstallAnywhere 8 (all languages)
InstallAnywhere 2008 (German and French)
InstallAnywhere 2009 (German and French)

The end of life for the localized German versions of InstallShield and the German and French versions of InstallAnywhere had already been announced two weeks ago.
The English versions of InstallShield 2008 and higher and InstallAnywhere 2008 and higher are not affected by this announcement.

More information about these end of life announcements can be found in the InstallSite Shop and the Acresso Website.

(German:) Kostenloses Kompendium zur Anwendungsvirtualiserung

2009-06-15T14:38:48Z

In der Reihe "Kompendium zur Virtualisierung" ist ein Heft mit Schwerpunkt Anwendungsvirtualisierung erschienen. Es behandelt unter anderem VMware ThinApp, Citrix XenApp, Microsoft App-V und InstallFree Bridge. Das 76-seitige Heft im DIN-A-5-Format erhält man kostenlos zugeschickt, wenn man sich auf SearchDataCenter.de registriert.

Why UAC isn’t a security boundary, and how auto-elevation works on Windows 7

2009-06-11T08:44:10Z

Mark Russinovich (of SysInternals fame and now employed as a Technical Fellow at Microsoft) has published an interesting article about User Account Control (UAC) in the July issue of TechNet Magazine.

He discusses the goal of UAC, why it could be circumvented by malware, and how auto-elevation on Windows 7 avoids elevation prompts from system tasks.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.07.uac.aspx

End of Life for InstallShield German announced

2009-06-02T11:33:19Z

Today Acresso announced the end of life for the German editions of InstallShield and for the German and French editions of InstallAnywhere.

There will be no German edition of InstallShield 2010, and upgrade pricing from the German to the English edition will end on October 31, 2009.

Here are the official announcements:

Additional information in German language:

Acresso Software, der Hersteller von InstallShield, hat bekannt gegeben, dass die deutsche Edition der InstallShield-Produktfamilie nicht fortgeführt wird. Somit sind InstallShield 2009 Premier, Professional und Express die letzten InstallShield-Produkte in deutscher Sprache. Ab InstallShield 2010 wird es die Software nur noch auf Englisch (und Japanisch) geben.

Bis 31.10.2009 gibt es einen Sonder-Rabatt beim Umstieg von der deutschen auf die englische Version. Danach ist kein Upgrade von der deutschen Version mehr möglich, d.h. ab 1.11.2009 muss der Preis der Vollversion bezahlt werden..

Hier habe ich einige Informationen für Besitzer und Interessenten von InstallShield German mit oder ohne Wartungsvertrag zusammengestellt:
http://www.installsite.biz/de/ix_ger_eol.htm

Ebenfalls betroffen ist InstallAnywhere, wo die deutsche und die französische Version eingestellt wird. Auch hier endet die Upgrade-Berechtigung am 31.10.2009.

New Advanced Installer 7.0 brings Windows Mobile/CE support

2009-05-26T16:45:05Z

On May 25th, 2009 Caphyon Ltd. announced the latest edition of its Windows Installer authoring tool. The new Advanced Installer enables developers and system administrators to easily build and repackage complex applications into reliable, ready to deploy MSI and EXE installers, patches and on-line updates.

The 7.0 release breaks new ground with the addition of full support for the Windows Mobile platform. Finally creating fully featured installers for your smartphone applications becomes just as easy as creating installers for your desktop products.

Another major addition in this release is the enhanced installation user interface. This brand new external UI implementation is laying the foundation for massive improvements on how your installers look and feel. Better Vista/Windows 7 integration, transparencies, exciting new controls and more powerful customization are ready to use in your installers.

Do you have installers already written with NSIS that you need to switch to Windows Installer? Advanced Installer 7.0 can import NSIS projects in addition to Visual Studio, WiX, Eclipse and Inno Setup. Quickly and painlessly convert them to MSI - with just a few mouse clicks.

And of course, as always, tons of smaller features come to help every-day's life of the installer developer. Application leftovers after uninstall are now a thing of the past with the built-in support for uninstall cleanup. Predefined Custom actions for port testing and application shutdowns. Prerequisites and launch conditions for XNA Framework, Windows Installer 5.0, Internet Explorer 8 and many more.

Other improvements in this version:

Windows Mobile/CE support
Import NSIS projects
Enhanced installation user interface
Cleanup application-generated resources and settings at uninstall
Persist user-modified application data through upgrades and repairs
Predefined custom action for testing if a port is free (not bound to an application)
Predefined custom action for closing applications
Custom name in the "Add or Remove Programs" applet
XNA Framework predefined prerequisite and launch condition
Windows Installer 5.0 predefined launch condition
Internet Explorer 8 predefined launch condition
SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 SP1 predefined prerequisite

Advanced Installer is available in four editions, starting with the Freeware community edition and offering a 30-day trial period for the other editions.

For more information and ordering Advanced Installer please see:
www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

(Text based on a press release from Caphyon Ltd.)

Windows 7 disguises as Vista to MSI Custom Actions

2009-05-18T08:46:57Z

In every new version of Windows, Microsoft includes numerous “shims” to improve compatibility with existing software. These shims are applied on a per-application basis. You can see which shims apply to an application using the Compatibility Administrator which is part of the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) – Download ACT version 5.5

The below screenshot shows the application compatibility settings for msiexec.exe, the process that runs all Windows Installer (MSI) setups.

As you can see among the shims that apply to Windows Installer there is VistaRTMVersionLie. This setting causes the GetVersionEx API to return Windows Vista values on Windows 7,when called from a custom action in a MSI setup.

Note that this only applies when a custom action checks for the Windows version using the GetVersionEx API. However the pre-defined MSI property VersionNT will properly be set to 601 on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 as documented. (Remember that that the VersionNT value is not 700 as one might expect, which is another application compatibility measure to work around setups that check the major OS version number.)

For information about the other shims that apply to MSI setups and a discussion about the “OS version lying” see Chris Jackson’s blog where he states that “there’s an arms race between app compat and the people who want to do the checks”.

Sample package from DesktopEngineer.com helps you becoming familiar with new MSI 4 and MSI 5 features

2009-05-15T05:50:33Z

Darwin Sanoy of DesktopEngineer.com has published a MSI sample package with a step-by-step self learning guide that leads you through testing new features in Windows Installer versions 4 and 5. Topics covered include:

signed and unsigned UAC prompts, signing MSI packages
elevation scenarios and custom actions permissions
per-user installations
full msi file caching
and more

Download: Test Package and 30 Page Lab Manual for Testing MSI 4.0 (Vista) and MSI 5.0 (Win7) Features

AdminStudio adds support for direct conversion to Microsoft App-V

2009-05-07T17:19:57Z

On April 28, 2009 Acresso Software announced the release of App-V support for AdminStudio.

AdminStudio can now directly convert existing physical application packages to the virtual format for use with Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V), part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, the most broadly distributed application virtualization technology. With the latest release of AdminStudio, organizations can accelerate the creation, testing and management of virtual applications being deployed through App-V, making AdminStudio a beneficial component to enable customers to rapidly prepare virtual applications and expedite App-V implementations.

AdminStudio accelerates virtual deployments by converting applications into the App-V format natively, without the use of the App-V Sequencer. AdminStudio also speeds virtual application packaging and deployment above and beyond the use of the native sequencing process, by offering vital time and effort saving tools, including:

an automated process to migrate a single application, a few .EXEs, or an entire library of MSI-based applications to the App-V virtual format
editing and customization of virtual and traditional applications via the award-winning InstallShield® technology built into AdminStudio
a pre-virtualization scan which helps to determine which existing applications are the best candidates for virtualization before being deployed in a virtual environment
a combined application catalog to manage package-centric business practices, including updates for virtual applications deployed via App-V and traditional applications deployed through System Center Configuration Manager
a direct integration with Acresso Workflow Manager, the blueprint tool for managing application readiness, application virtualization, OS migrations, and other desktop management processes.

In beta use, AdminStudio users have seen physical to virtual application conversion times reduced from weeks to just a few hours. AdminStudio automated tools for converting applications, including batch conversion functionality, have migrated application libraries of over 200 applications from the MSI format to the App-V format in less than two hours.

With the addition of App-V support, AdminStudio now supports three popular application virtualization formats:

VMware ThinApp (formerly known as Thinstall)
Citrix XenApp
Microsoft App-V (formerly known as SoftGrid)

And of course, AdminStudio continues to support Windows Installer (MSI) packaging. Application virtualization support is an add-on package that’s available for the Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions of AdminStudio.

AdminStudio is available in the InstallSite Shop.

(Text based on a press release from Acresso Software)

No joke – WiX will NOT Ship with Visual Studio

2009-04-03T04:07:00Z

Several months ago, Microsoft had announced that the next version of Visual Studio (Visual Studio 2010, code name Rosario) will ship with a subset of the Windows Installer XML Toolkit (WiX). But on April 1st, 2009, Rob Mensching, the WiX project lead, had bad news to announce on his blog: “Visual Studio will not ship the WiX toolset, contributes only”.

Given the date, and since Microsoft officially had announced WiX in Visual Studio and CTP pre-releases of Rosario included WiX, I assumed that this was an April Fool’s joke. Unfortunately, it is not.

I don’t know what the exact reasons were for this unexpected decision, so I can’t really judge. But I think that it’s a lose-lose situation. Visual Studio won’t ship with an advanced Windows Installer authoring tool. And the open source WiX project won’t be “blessed” as a product that’s backed by Microsoft support.

The good news is that WiX will continue to work with and integrate in Visual Studio, and that the work that the Visual Studio team has contributed to the WiX project isn’t lost but will help to finalize WiX 3.0.

Let’s hope that the disappointment that this decision probably has caused in the team will not stop their enthusiasm.

InstallBuilder 6.0 released with Extended GUI and Automatic Update Delivery

2009-04-03T00:14:00Z

On March 11, 2009 BitRock Inc announced the release of InstallBuilder 6.0. The latest release of the cross-platform application packaging tool includes an extended GUI, so you can now access all of InstallBuilder’s functionality without having to edit the XML project files by hand. It also includes automatic update capabilities, so companies can send software updates directly to their users.

For more information and ordering visit the InstallSite shop at
http://www.installsite.biz/en/bitrock.htm

New Advanced Installer 6.9 brings multi-instance installs and IIS Application Pools support

2009-03-26T07:29:00Z

On March 18th, 2009 Caphyon Ltd. announced the latest edition of its Windows Installer authoring tool. The new Advanced Installer enables developers and system administrators to easily build and repackage complex applications into reliable, ready to deploy MSI and EXE installers, patches and on-line updates.

The 6.9 release helps you build installers able to install multiple instances of a product on the same computer, avoiding conflicts through separate resource (file and registry) spaces.

The addition of an Application Pools feature completes Advanced Installer's comprehensive Web Application support covering IIS, SQL Server, SQL scripts and ASP.NET.

Also new in this version is the ability to schedule image slide shows in the background during the install of your application. Together with full billboard editor, this opens up additional possibilities of branding, advertising and presenting your products during install.

Other improvements in this version:

Ability to install multiple instances of the same product
IIS Application Pools support
Extensible trial period
Programmable image slide shows for installation background
Back / Next navigation in Advanced Installer's graphical interface
Hide Java Launcher settings from end-user

Advanced Installer is available in four editions, starting with the Freeware community edition and offering a 30-day trial period for the other editions.

For more information and ordering Advanced Installer please see:
www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

(Text based on a press release from Caphyon Ltd.)

Answers from the MSI Team

2009-03-13T00:31:25Z

Last week at Microsoft’s Global MVP Summit I had the opportunity to sit down with the MSI and WiX teams. It was great to meet all these Windows Installer experts and we had some interesting discussions. With me I had some questions from readers of my blog and visitors of my web site, and the MSI team was kind enough to answer them, as below. I want to thank everyone who took the time to meet with me – it was a great experience.

Only some of the people I met:

Zainab Hakim (program manager for Windows Installer), Hemchander "Hem" Sannidhanam (Dev lead for Windows Installer), Bob Arnson (WiX project admin), Ashish Awasthi (developer on the MSI team), Rob Mensching (WiX project admin), Mark Rovetta (documentation writer for Windows Installer)

Answers to your Questions

Please note that some questions were sent to me in German so I translated them to English. I also slightly shortened or re-worded some of the questions.

Question from David: Our problem is basically a componentization problem, and the very, very limited ability to return information from an MSI install. In our case, we chain a number of 3rd-party MSIs into our install. What we would like to be able to do is have custom return codes for msiexec so that we can communicate to our distribution mechanism that the overall install succeeded, but that a particular component package failed. (InstallShield gave us a custom fix that allows error return codes to be ignored for chained .msi packages). Ideally, this could be something like an extra column the Error table, and an option indicating whether that error is a terminating condition or not.

Answer from the MSI Team: Like you already mentioned, handling the exit codes from msiexec.exe would actually be a functionality of the chainer. To get the exact error codes you could use a chainer with external UI, which would receive the error messages via its callback function.

Question from Colby: When will the MSI team add support for managed code custom actions (similar to the WiX DTF extensions)?

Answer from the MSI Team: DTF is a great solution for this purpose. Like every company, the MSI team at Microsoft doesn’t have unlimited resources and therefore has to set priorities. We work to improve and advance the platform instead of duplicating solutions that are already available from third parties.

Question from Carsten: We are using .NET applications more and more. Therefore .NET support in Windows Installer is becoming increasingly important. A hot topic is starting of .NET applications from a network drive. To enable starting from network drives we need to create a code group in the .NET runtime which contains the key of the strong named digital signature of our components. With this code group we can specify a zone in which the .NET code will be executed, for instance the “internet” zone. We currently use installer class custom actions (written in C#) to create this code group. Will there be a Windows Installer solution for such configurations?

Answer from the MSI Team: When using .NET 3.5 SP1 the runtime now trusts network shares (editor’s note: see .NET 3.5 SP1 Runs Managed Applications From Network Shares). Other than that, managed code custom actions are a viable solution.

Question from Carsten: In a Major Upgrade, .NET components which have been installed in the GAC will be removed during uninstall of the old version but not installed again during install of the new version, if the version of the .NET component hasn’t changed. Workarounds would be incrementing the file version of the component, even if the file hasn’t really changed, or moving the RemoveExistingProducts action to the end of the install sequence. The latter is not an option for us, and manually incrementing the file version isn’t a good solution either. Will future MSI versions have better support for GAC installs?

Answer from the MSI Team: This is a bug that has been fixed in Windows 7 (MSI 5). However, the fix has not been back ported to SP2 for Windows Vista and Server 2008 as yet.

Question from Carsten: Will there be better cooperation between Windows Installer and security tools like anti-virus tools? These are sometimes preventing InstallScript custom actions from running, or block applications that are being launched for installation, even if they are digitally signed.

Answer from the MSI Team: This is not a problem that Windows Installer can solve. A workaround would be to avoid script based custom actions. Also there are anti virus tools that are particularly careful with setups to avoid such false positives.

Question from Carsten: When doing an administrative install the digital signature is invalidated. Will there be a solution for this?

Answer from the MSI Team: While MSI 5 will fix the problem with invalidating the digital signatures of locally cached .msi files by not stripping any embedded CABs, it will not solve the issue for administrative installs. When installing from an administrative image the source must be trusted in some other way.

Windows 7 Beta Testers – don’t miss the Live Meeting and Chat on MSI 5

2009-02-26T20:06:30Z

Next week’s feature focus in the Windows 7 beta test will be on Windows Installer (and on Devices and Printers). As part of that, there’ll be a Live Meeting on Monday, March 2, and a chat on Thursday, March 5. These events are open to registered beta testers of Windows 7 and can be accessed from the calendar on Microsoft Connect.

In addition, there are a number of MSI related test tasks on Microsoft’s Scenario Feedback site.

Live Essentials Update Rant

2009-02-21T20:55:30Z

Today when I tried to log in to Live Messenger I was notified of a required update. The dialog said that I must install this update before I can log in, so it’s not an optional update. The update itself didn’t come as a surprise, I had read about it some days ago on the Windows Live Team blog, however they said it would be an optional upgrade.

During the installation I was presented with this dialog (I’m using the German version, so apologies to those who don’t speak German):

In the bottom left it lists the programs that will be updated. Besides Messenger there’s also Photo Gallery and Writer. These are all the programs from the Live Essentials suite that I have installed, and it’s understandable that their versions should be kept in sync, so no problem here.

But in the upper left are all the Live Essential programs that have chosen NOT to install. And as you can see they are all selected for installation (except Movie Maker because it’s still in beta). Why can’t the Live Essentials installer remember and respect my previous selection? Why does it try to push these other programs on me when all I wanted to do is update Live Messenger?

This attitude continues in the final step of the install. As you may have guessed already, the installer wants to change my default search provider and my browser homepage:

I can (and did) de-select those options, but why are they selected by default? I feel like the Live installer is trying to trick me into doing things that I don’t want to do. And all this just for a tiny Messenger update from version 14.0.8050.1202 to version 14.0.8064.0206.

Preparing for MVP Summit – Your Questions for the MSI Team?

2009-02-20T11:43:00Z

It’s MVP Summit time again! Next week I’ll be travelling to Seattle and Redmond to attend the MVP Global Summit, an event where Microsoft invites MVPs from around the world to hear about the latest technologies, meet the product teams, network, and also have a little fun :)

For me this means that I’ll have the opportunity to sit down with the Windows Installer team (including their documentation writer) and also folks from the WiX team.

Now I have this idea to not only ask my own questions, but also on behalf of my blog readers. So is there anything you always (or recently) wanted to ask the MSI team or some feedback you want to give them? Please let me know. Either post your question as a comment on the blog or send it to me by e-mail skrueger [at] installsite.org

Of course I can’t promise that your questions will be answered (or in some cases I may not be allowed to publish the answer if it’s under NDA). But it’s worth a try.

30% Discount off InstallShield and InstallAnywhere Upgrades through April

2009-02-18T15:22:19Z

For a limited time you can save 30% when upgrading to the latest versions of InstallShield or InstallAnywhere.

This offer is valid for upgrades from InstallShield 12 or InstallShield 2008 to InstallShield 2009 and from InstallAnywhere 8, InstallAnywhere 2008 or InstallAnywhere 2008 Value Pack 1 to InstallAnywhere 2009.

In addition to pure upgrades the offer is also valid for upgrades bundled with a maintenance plan. (It is not valid for full products, maintenance renewals or end-of-live products.)

This special offer runs until April 30, 2009.

You can buy InstallShield and InstallAnywhere from the InstallSite Shop

FLEXnet Connect 6.1 Security Update

2009-02-16T10:43:44Z

Acresso has published a fix for a security issue in FLEXnet Connect (previously called InstallShield Update Service) that was reported in September 2008.

The problem was that FLEXnet connect used an unauthenticated HTTP connection to download and execute scripts from the update server. Therefore an attacker could cause the client to execute malicious scripts, for instance by redirecting the connection using a proxy or a DNS attack.

The update is only available for FLEXnet Connect version 6.1. According to the US-CERT FLEXnet Connect version 11.1.100.17104 or higher is not affected by the problem.

Acresso’s knowledge base article about the security update has no technical details about how the problem was fixed.

The update is available for the FLEXnet Connect client agent which is already installed on end users’ computers and for the FLEXnet Connect SDK which developers adding FLEXnet Connect to their setup should install on their development machines.

To deploy the end user hotfix to your customers, create and publish an update to your product, as described in the knowledge base article.

To install the fixed SDK, you must first manually uninstall the previous version from your development machine (I wonder why Acresso isn’t using a Major Upgrade for this purpose).

New Advanced Installer 6.8 brings Inno Setup project importing

2009-02-11T12:04:14Z

On February 5th, 2009 Caphyon Ltd. announced the latest edition of its Windows Installer authoring tool. The new Advanced Installer enables developers and system administrators to easily build and repackage complex applications into reliable, ready to deploy MSI and EXE installers, patches and on-line updates.

The 6.8 version makes switching to Windows Installer easier than ever before by importing Inno Setup projects. Move to MSI setups without losing the time and effort already invested into your installers.

New predefined Custom Actions allow you to list all databases users can connect to in the installation UI, detect processes or services and call any function in any standard DLL.

Customize multiple installers generated from a single project with different GUI themes according to each target market and audience.

Other improvements in this version:

Import Inno Setup projects
Call function from standard DLL predefined custom action
Ability to add new dialogs directly in the UI Sequence
List all databases the user can connect to
Detect process and stop process predefined custom actions
Detect service predefined custom action
Per-build GUI themes
Ability to condition standard actions
Detailed information when trying to remove a referenced file, folder or property
Wizard for "Browse IIS Websites & Virtual Directories" predefined custom action
Wizard for "Browse for SQL Servers" predefined custom action
Installed Office 2003 application predefined launch condition

Advanced Installer is available in four editions, starting with the Freeware community edition and offering a 30-day trial period for the other editions.

For more information about Advanced Installer please see:
www.installsite.biz/advancedinstaller.htm

(Text based on a press release from Caphyon Ltd.)

VMware looking for Senior Software Engineer MSI/C/C++

2009-02-06T18:09:26Z

This is a job opening at the VMware Headquarters in Palo Alto, CA (USA). VMware is looking for smart C/C++ developers that have experience developing MSI packages. This opportunity is for an onsite developer to help lead the development of new MSI technologies at VMware as well as to mentor the younger developers on the team. If you are interested in this position, or know someone who might be, please contact Antonio Busalacchi (antonio.busalacchi@gmail.com).

Senior Software Engineer – Product Infrastructure Team

Description

VMware’s Product Infrastructure Team (PIT) is looking for a strong software engineer to help design and implement features and infrastructure for use in packaging VMware’s Desktop products. The PIT-Package team is responsible for the installers, packaging, and OS integration for VMware's Desktop product lines as well as providing frameworks that are used by teams across the entire company to solve complex installer and packaging problems.

PIT is a group of engineers that work with a broad variety of technologies, programming languages and OS platforms to solve the problems faced by all of VMware's Desktop products. People on the team are very passionate about their work and are looking for similarly motivated and flexible software engineers.

Responsibilities

Invent, design, and implement novel features and enhancements for VMware's Desktop product installers.
Design and own key components of our infrastructure.
Support VMware product releases by maintaining packaging software on Windows, OS X, and Linux.
Develop flexible, reusable code that can be shared in multiple components across several operating systems.
Interact with other product teams, customer support organization and the release team.

Requirements

BS or MS in Engineering or CS and 5+ years of commercial software product development experience, or equivalent experience
Strong coding skills in C/C++.
Experience in a variety of technical areas.
Familiarity with Windows application programming (COM/Win32/MFC/ATL) or Linux application programming (gtk2).
Familiarity with packaging/installation technology (MSI for Windows, RPM/tar/apt for Linux).
Cross-platform (Linux, OS X, and Windows) experience desirable.
Experience with desktop integration (Windows shell or KDE/Gnome desktop) a plus.
Experience with scripting languages (vbscript/Perl/Python/shell) a plus.
Must be motivated, detail-oriented, have the ability to thrive in a team environment.
Very strong analytical skills, good judgment, passion for your work.
Good design skills and insight about usability.
Good teamwork and communication skills.
Ability to work under deadlines.