Consider a case where I have installshield software which installs a .msi through chained installation. Let's say it's Setup-1.
Now I have another setup Setup-2 which installs the same .msi through chained installation.
Now if I uninstall either of the setup (Setup-1 or Setup-2), it is uninstalling the chained msi. So the other setup cannot use it which leads to a problem. Only when both are uninstalled, it should be uninstalled. It should be something like shared components.
A further idea to explore is to instead use Suite Installers. Suite projects are available in Installshield Premier and will allow you to wrap multiple packages inside a single setup.exe More importantly they also have the ability to share packages among different suite installers. This means that the shared package will remain on the machine until the last suite product is removed. There's more information on this here: https://docs.revenera.com/installshield27helplib/helplibrary/SteSharedPackages.htm
A Chained MSI is its own MSI installation and as such will behave as one when asked to uninstall - we don't see a count of 2 anywhere if you try to install an MSI twice, instead you will see a maintenance dialog asking if you want to modify,repair or unsinatll. Unfortunatley if you have a different application with the same chained MSI then it would be expected behaviour that when you uninstall, the chained MSI will install also.
There are 2 options I can initailly think of here - The first would be to alter the uninstall condition in the Chained MSI settings. Changing the condition so the Chained MSI is never uninstalled when the parent is would mean that it won't break any other application that uses the same chained MSI. The responsibility of removing the Chained MSI would then be on the user to do so manually when they no longer want it.
Alternatively - you can use prerequisites instead. The default behaviour is again that this will leave the MSI on the target machine, allowing the user to manually remove it when they no longer require it.
Actually in our case there could be different versions of .msi file. So if we didn't uninstall, then the user would see many .msi in the add or remove programs.
Asking to user to uninstall will also not be a option for us, because each Setup will be linked with different .msi version. So if the user by mistake uninstall the wrong one, the product won't work.
So it looks like we don't have a concept of shared components in chained installation.
A further idea to explore is to instead use Suite Installers. Suite projects are available in Installshield Premier and will allow you to wrap multiple packages inside a single setup.exe More importantly they also have the ability to share packages among different suite installers. This means that the shared package will remain on the machine until the last suite product is removed. There's more information on this here: https://docs.revenera.com/installshield27helplib/helplibrary/SteSharedPackages.htm
This is the exact thing I am looking. It looks like the package option is not available for Installshield 2016. But anyway I will explore more on this. Thanks for the help.
Here at TLUX Technologies we have InstallShield experts available on a dayrate basis to help solve specific issues like this - please do reach out to info@tlux-group.com or +1 (872) 281 4069 if interested. We are the official consulting and training partner of Revenera globally.
