MSI package with conditional chained items MUST install at least one ?

[BrHartmann]

I ran into an issue today and didn't see anything about it in searching the forums.

I have a basic MSI x64 project with some chained MSI's, and this has worked fine in the past. Recently I added a new product configuration which is supposed to use NONE of the chained packages. Apparently this case doesn't make Windows installer happy ... I captured a log and I believe this is the relevant error:

Action 16:28:54: ISChainPackagePrepare.
Action start 16:28:54: ISChainPackagePrepare.
CustomAction ISChainPackagePrepare returned actual error code 1603 (note this may not be 100% accurate if translation happened inside sandbox)
Action ended 16:28:54: ISChainPackagePrepare. Return value 3.

If I rebuild and alter the release flags to allow one of the chained packages to be included as a test, the install succeeds.

I'm hoping there is a workaround for this so I don't need to maintain duplicate copies of 2 MSI projects (32-bit and 64-bit) to handle the "do not use any chained MSI" product config/release case. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[BrHartmann]

Granted, rather than resort to duplicating the larger project, I would create a tiny dummy additional chained msi package that would effectively be invisible to the end user. Still, if there's a fix or a better workaround someone can suggest, please let me know.

Thanks.

[MichaelU]

One approach could be to conditionalize the ISChainPackagePrepare action against the appropriate ISReleaseFlags value such that it does not execute in this scenario.

[BrHartmann]

Thanks Michael, worked like a charm.

(Note to others - there is a help file topic specifically addressing how to use this: "Conditionally Launching Custom Actions Based on Release Flags")