2 replies to this topic

[tprovick]

I am relatively unskilled in the use of windows installer technologies and recently hit the wall of my knowledge and was hoping I could find some help getting on the path to a solution.

Basically, I have two separate applications (.NET 1.1 in C#), each with their own installer. The 2nd application requires the first application (a windows service) to draw data from. I want an installer that will check if the 1st component is installed and install it if not found (as it's own item in Add/Remove Programs) and then install the 2nd component (as it's own item in Add/Remove Programs). We want this functionality because we may want to have multiple versions of the 2nd component installed on one machine sharing one version of the windows service.

Any thoughts on how to approach this problem? Great! Please help me out.

Still don't understand what I am talking about? Read on for my original unsummarized draft of my question.

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The software solution (.NET 1.1 C#) I am deploying consists of two applications: a windows service that does most of the actual logic and a separate UI client that use communicates with the service for any data it needs. This works fine and we have an installer that uses a merge module for the service that installs both components just fine.

The problem comes when we want to deploy multiple versions of the UI client (the one service can provide backend connectivity for multiple clients). I'm not sure how we can skip installation of the service without interrupting the installation of the client. Also, the service and client are installed under one item in the Add/Remove Programs screen, so we have no way of preserving the service when we want to uninstall one of the clients.

I was hoping someone might be able to point me to the simplest way to separate the service and client into two separate install items but allow for one combined installer that will install each piece if they are necessary. So far we have been any additional commercial tools to build our installers, but if they would solve our problem, we are willing to consider them.

[MSchnecke]

One aproach is to create the first installer as a prerequisite component of the second installer. Modern commercial authoring products includes prerequisite editors. Maybe a good advise to use them as an unskilled msi author.

[tprovick]

Wouldn't adding the first component as a prerequisite to the second only prevent the second from being installed if the first is not? It wouldn't actually provide a mechanism for installing both applications in one go?

Update: Ok, taking a look at the prerequisite editor in Installshield. Might let me do what I am hoping to do.

Edited by tprovick, 07 July 2006 - 19:52.