Jump to content


This is a ready-only archive of the InstallSite Forum. You cannot post any new content here. / Dies ist ein Archiv des InstallSite Forums. Hier können keine neuen Beiträge veröffentlicht werden.
Photo

Advertised Shortcuts & Auto-Repair


1 reply to this topic

Pizzero

Pizzero
  • Full Members
  • 22 posts

Posted 14 March 2008 - 11:28

Being new to advertised shortcuts and their auto-repair functions I made the following observations in carefully prepared situations (, which I could not find in the official docs):

* A component, containing an advertised shortcut and assigned to more than one feature (which are installed exclusively, in this case only one of them is added locally, the others are explicitely removed) will not install the shortcut (neither on the desktop nor in other locations). However the keypath file of the component was installed. (I also checked setting the feature as "allow advertising" / "prefer advertising"). If the component is assigned exclusively to one feature everything works fine.

* Using the advertised shortcut of a component can trigger auto-repair for all of the components in the same feature and all of the components in sub-features - regardless of whether any of the other components has been assigned to some other (in my case always deactivated) sub-features.

* Using the advertised shortcut of a component can never trigger auto-repair for any of the components that are part of "parent features" (features that in a tree-view are closer to the root than the feature assigned to this component) - regardless of whether any of the other components has been assigned to any distinct (in my case always deactivated) parent features.

I have two questions: What is the reason that observation #1 showed a fail? And exists there a possibility to enable auto-repair for all of the installed components / features of an installation (observation #3)? I don't see any reason to enable auto-repair -apart from the assigned feature- only for sub-features.



Zweitze

Zweitze
  • Full Members
  • 522 posts

Posted 17 March 2008 - 11:08

Be careful about the terminology - auto-repair is different than advertizing (install on demand).

Auto-repair happens on component-level: when the key file of a component is missing, auto-repair fixes the problem.
Advertizing happens on feature level: when an advertized feature is activated, all component of that feature will be installed. When its parent feature is also advertized, the components of that feature will be installed as well, and its parents features etc. Note that components of child features will not be installed, even when that child feature is marked as Required.

1) This finding is due to the feature/component difference. A developer wants to control the installation at component level, a user wants to control installation at feature level. Windows Installer has more problems like these, especially with the Class and ProgId table.

2) The advertized shortcut will not trigger auto-repair. It will trigger Install on Demand on all components of the feature and its parent feature. A normal shortcut may trigger auto-repair of a component, when the key file of a component is missing.

3) This is certainly not one of my findings. When I did heavy experimenting with Active Directory installing (that advertizes a complete product, nothing was installed), activating a feature also meant installing components of its parent feature.

Note that the Windows Installer also has functions to repair a component, and to install a feature on demand - so you can always taylor your needs in the software you install.