7 replies to this topic

[bob.freeth]

I am a small shareware developer using Visual Basic 6 and currently deploy using the Package and Deployment Wizard.

In line with the Windows Vista recommendations I wish to switch to using an MSI based installer and have tried Visual Studio Installer 1.1

Q1. So far I have not found any way of specifying a Per Machine installation. Can I do this with VSI 1.1?

Q2. I cannot find any references to Manifests - is this not in VSI 1.1?

Q3. Does anyone have a recommended product to enable me to produce Vista-aware installations and not break the bank?

Thanks

[Gareth at Serif]

I've got some per-machine / per-user issues of my own, but I'll make a new thread about those.

For Q1, you need to declare a property ALLUSERS=1 and all folder property references will start finding the common all-user version. For example, StartMenuFolder will find something like C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu rather than C:\Documents and Settings\<CURRENT_USER>\Start Menu. It's quite a powerful property.

For Q3, I use WiX. It's open source and exceptionally powerful for all your MSI creation needs.

Regards,
Gareth

[bob.freeth]

Thank you Gareth. I have searched the Visual Studio Installer help file for references to the ALLUSERS keyword but cannot find anything.

Could you please point me in the right direction as to how I add the property declaration in Visual Studio Installer.

Thanks

[Gareth at Serif]

Sorry Bob, but I'm not familiar with Visual Studio Installer, I am merely aware that the MSI property table looks for the ALLUSERS property to decide upon per-user or per-machine installations.

[bob.freeth]

OK - I understand. Thank you for responding to my question.

I am beginning to think that Visual Studio Installer has been constrained in its abilities.

Maybe there is a way of taking the .MSI output and adding the missing pieces with another tool, but this is starting to get a bit messy.

[Gareth at Serif]

You could open the MSI in ORCA and add the property to the table... you can test it'd work from command line beforehand to test your changes too. Something like:

[bob.freeth]

Thank you Gareth. I'll take a look at Wix but I think I will find it a whole new learning mountain.

I'll monitor this thread for a week to see if anyone else comes up with suggestions, but right now I think the answers to my questions are:

Q1. No, Visual Studio Installer 1.1 cannot produce per machine MSI installs (as recommended by Microsoft in a recent webcast I watched)

Q2. Visual Studio Installer 1.1 knows nothing of manifests, so can't produce a Vista aware MSI install.

Q3. Wix can produce Vista aware MSIs but it seems (to me) like a steep learning curve.

I have looked at InstallAware but it does not import Visual Basic Projects

I have emailed Tarma but they responded "Thanks for your message. We are not supporting Vista yet, and it may be that we will not support it at all. This does not mean that our installers won't run under Windows Vista; it just means that we will not be providing Vista-specific features or support."

Suggestions for deploying VB6 applications to Vista are welcome.

It may transpire that the plethora of warnings emanating from installing VB6 software to a UAC-enabled Vista PC become a way of life.

[Gareth at Serif]

A colleague of mine is working on creating Vista manifests for us, but he's not here right now :-( As far as I'm aware they are easily created in notepad in a similar format to ini files.