How to select Prerequisites depending on if installed silently?
Hi,
I’m using Installshield 2008 Pro. In my installation I’m installing SQL Express as a prerequisite. I have an enhancement to make this a silent installation. In other installations I’ve created an setup.iss file and used the /s option. But what I’d want now is to show the SQLExpress installation GUI with normal installs but install SQLExpress silently if the /s option is used.
Can you alter at runtime which a prerequisite is run or how it's run?
Hmmm, I can't think of a conditional expression that would include a prereq for FullUI but not Silent. I also can't think of a use case that would require that. ( Perhaps a faulty optional prereq that didn't support silent installs ).
But there is the ability to pass one commandline when Full UI and a different commandline when Silent. Just find out what the commandline for a given package is and wire it up.
Doubt it should be probel... sqlexpress should support a silent install.
So far in my idea has been basically to install SQL Express not as prerequisite but as a “post-requisite” and use LaunchAppAndWait() to run it. I’ll just encase the whole thing in IF (MODE=Silent) and change the command line as needed.
That seems entirely overcomplicated. Prereqs do have the ability to run a different commandline when silent and when not silent. In fact, that makes me think........ if you make a helper.exe to act as an intermediate to the real install you could pass it a /NOOPERATION argument that causes it to not run and then you could tell the prereq that if the conidtion still evaluates to continue the setup, you could in fact have a prereq that fires during UI but not Silent.
Also in IS2009 you can associate a prereq to a feature and you could put a UILevel condition on the feature ( absent the feature = no install the prerq ) so this could be done more cleanly.
