allandaemon/lessmsi

A tool to view and extract the contents of an Windows Installer (.msi) file.

lessmsi

This is a utility with a graphical user interface and a command line interface that can be used to view and extract the contents of an MSI file.

Usage

To extract from the command line:

 lessmsi x <msiFileName> [<outouptDir>]

For more command line usage see CommandLine.

Installation

Install via Chocolatey (or download a zip).

Features

Windows Explorer Integration

Lessmsi also integrates with Windows Explorer so that you can right-click on a Windows Installer file (.msi file) and select "Extract Files" to extract it into a folder right there:

Just select Preferences from the Edit menu to enable (or disable) the explorer integration:

GUI

In addition to allowing you to extract files from the command line and from inside Windows Explorer, lessmsi has a graphical user interface that allows you to view detailed information about any MSI file.

MSI Table Viewer

Windows Installer (.msi files) are based on an internal database of tables. Lessmsi features a viewer for those tables. Useful for people who work a lot with installers.

lessmsi on OS X using WINE

all of the following approaches give errors on the command line, but seem to work regardless.

lessmsi command line using wine

use lessmsi on the command line using wine: (this example uses the wine.app that comes with winebottler)

/Applications/Wine.app/Contents/Resources/bin/wine /Users/username/Downloads/lessmsi-v1.2.0/lessmsi.exe v /Users/username/Downloads/msi2xml-2.2.1.957.msi 

lessmsi GUI using wine

lessmsi GUI working with WineBottler. http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/

You can download a zip compressed .app created with winebottler here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/640753/lessmsi.zip

You can make it yourself using the following screenshot & winebottler:

Suggestion? Problem? Comment?

If you have a problem please submit it by clicking in the Issue tracker and I'll look into it when I can.

Contributions

Pull requests are welcome! Just make sure the Travis-CI build (compile only) passes and you run unit tests and I'll merge your contributions ASAP! The Issues app has an indication of some of the plans.

You Earn Bitcoin Tips for Contributing!

We're now tipping committers with bitcoin:

Originally from Scott Willeke's blog http://blogs.pingpoet.com/overflow and http://blog.scott.willeke.com . It was also called Less Msiérables as well as lessmsi.