Install Multiple Instances w/ InstallScript?

[sucellus]

We have an installer that is already written in InstallScript. Currently 3 identical features are configured to install our software into 3 different locations, for production, training, and testing purposes. This is the standard install for most of our customers, however some want to be able to install our software more times then that.

We are trying to create an installer that will only install a single instance of our software, but can be run multiple times to install it multiple times. Is that possible with InstallScript or will we need to create an all new installer?

Thanks.

[Christopher_Pai]

Provided your app is isolated ( will work as desired side by side in different directories ) this has pretty much always been supported by InstallScript projects. Just go to General Information | Project Properties | Maintenance Exprience and change it from Standard to Multi-Instance.

This used to be one of the advantages of an InstallScript project over an MSI project. But no longer....

http://blog.deploymentengineering.com/2008/03/installshield-2009-beta-part-i.html

[sucellus]

Thanks, that's easy!

Is there anything special you need to do to allow upgrades to work in a mult-instance installer like this?

For instance:
v1 installed at path A (production)
v1 installed at path B (training)
v2 installed at path C (test)

The user wants to upgrade v1 -> v2 at path A.

Is there documentation on multi-instance support someplace?

[Christopher_Pai]

Again, provided your application is isolated without overlap...

( such as a COM Server that gets installed to CommonFiles or a COM server that gets installed isolated but the interface / com signature changes between releases )

Then multiple instance servicing ( configuration and upgrading ) really shouldn't be any different then single instance servicing except that when you run the EXE it asks you if you want to install yet another one or upgrade A B or C.