3 replies to this topic

[lakshmra]

Hi,

I am using basic MSI and have one master installation that installs multiple products. Each product is uniquely identified by a feature which gets enabled or disabled based on user selections!

My question is whether it is possible to distribute my master installation as seperate installations each containing only a product feature?

For example my master installation has featureA & featureB. Now featureA is actually ProductA and featureB is actually ProductB. Now when i distribute the installation on a CD, it is fine. But i would like users to download just productA or productB from the web and install it. If i disribute the products this way, will it affect patching or upgrades?

What is the best way to handle this scenario?Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Stefan Krueger]

You can generate two separate MSI files from your project file. Use Release Flags to filter out the features that don't a apply to a product, and use the Product Configuration settings to define the filtering and to assign separate product codes and product names for the two packages.

You'll end up with three products (the two separate and the one with both included). As a result you will have to maintain three updates/patches.

Maybe you can get rid of the one setup that installs both applications, and instead put the two separate MSIs on the CD as well, and use a front end (CD browser, e.g. DemoShield) to invoke them.

[lakshmra]

Hi Stefan,
Thanks for your reply.

Actually i am looking for something like the TRANSFORMS behaviour where i can use my base package to generate different target packages. Each of the target packages is a subset of the parent but behaves independantly of the other. Thus when i distribute each product as a transform, and users download multiple products and install them, i do not want the user to have any issues.

Will TRANSFORMS help? I am not comfortable with having different product guids for different products.

Help is greatly appreciated in this matter again. Thanks

[Stefan Krueger]

If don't use different GUIDs than only one package can be installed on a given machine at time. So if you make two download packages, one for Product A and one for Product B, and both use the same ProductCode GUID, a user who has installed Product A cannot install Product B. Transforms will make no difference here (unless they change the product GUID)