I suspect my usage of InstallShield - which dates back many years - is fairly typical. My day job is a developer and I primarily use Visual Basic (other programming languages are available). Then I reach a point where I need to build a release - so after weeks, sometimes months, I open up InstallShield and wonder what I need to change to include my latest changes. I have always found InstallShield very hard to use, and perhaps its biggest drawback is the inability to plant comments in the various elements of the InstallShield structures to act as aide memoirs to support this (usual) intermittent usage.
Or have I missed something all this time.
InstallShield is as complex as any programming language - but every language I have experienced in nearly 50 years of coding lets you annotate your code, both for yourself and your successors.
It is probably too late to retrofit a comment structure into InstallShield - a great shame..................
Every Component and every Feature does have a Comments field. Also every Custom Action has Comments. Every SQL Script also has a Comments field. They each say this Component Comments Enter comments about this component. Your comments are saved in the project file for your reference and are not used in the installation at any time.
Feature Comments Enter comments to help you track the changes you make to a feature, or for any future reference. The feature's comments are stored only in the project file and are not used in the installation at any time. Custom Action Comments Enter any internal comments that you want to record for this custom action. These comments are for your reference only and are not displayed to end users.
SQL Scripts Comments "No description of these fields"
