Documenting and packaging the new Simple DNS Plus API

We will be releasing a new Simple DNS Plus API for .NET and COM this coming week - watch our company blog/RSS for the announcement.

We were actually pretty close to releasing something very similar for COM about a year ago, but that project was eventually scrapped for several reasons.
Primarily we were stuck with the API documentation because this could not be automated, but around the same time we were also shifting our focus to the .NET platform and therefore knew that we would not maintain this project going forward anyway.

So this time around we wanted automated documentation from the beginning.
The solution turned out to be Microsoft's "Sandcastle" project (see http://www.sandcastledocs.com and https://blogs.msdn.com/sandcastle) along with SandcastleGUI (see http://www.inchl.nl/SandcastleGUI).
This combination makes it real simple to convert XML comments from .NET source code into a real .chm help file and matching web version.
Check out the (preliminary) API documentation at http://www.simpledns.com/apihelp
Sandcastle is still in beta but works pretty good already.

Then it came time to package the first alpha version of the new API.
We have been using InstallShield to build installers in the past, but were not real happy with it and therefore haven't upgraded it for a while.
I thought we were going to be using the deployment functions in Visual Studio 2005 which is much improved compared to earlier Microsoft offerings, but we still ran into some issues.
When distributing software over the Internet, I believe that this should be done with a single self-extracting, self-installing, and signed .exe file.
Unfortunately there is still no way to create such an installer in VS2005.
Luckily the Windows operating system conveniently ships with "IExpress" which can package the install files from VS2005 just like I wanted, and the resulting .exe file can then be signed manually with the SDK tools.
BUT - it turns out that packages created with IExpress on Windows Vista do not work on Windows 2000, and packages created with IExpress on Window XP act weird on Windows Vista...

So it was time to look for alternatives - and I found a great one in "Advanced Installer Professional" (see http://www.advancedinstaller.com).
With this tool it is much simpler to configure the installer project, it can package everything into one .exe, and it can automatically sign it.
And I really like the way it automates downloading of prerequisites such as the .NET Framework.
I highly recommend it!