Maintaining multiple versions of a product release
I've got a requirement to develop 2 versions of the installer for our product. They are 95% identical except that the "server" version of our product will only be permitted to install on Server 2003/2008 and the "workstation" version will only install on XP/Vista. The "workstation" version will install SQL Express via a setup prerequisite but the "server" version will not install SQL Express.
My question is, is it possible to build both versions from 1 ISM project file? The obvious place I looked at was what sort of variations are possible with multiple IS project "configurations" and "releases". However, these seem more geared to varying how the install is physically packaged and not about varying internal things like OS and prerequisite checks. The only other option I thought of was if the ISM file XML markup differences between the 2 are not too extreme, was to manage an XML transform in our build script to dynamically generate the alternate ISM file at build time. I already use an XML transform at build time to insert the build# at various places. Sounds extreme I know, but I'll do about anything to avoid the maintenance cost of supporting 2 separate ISM project files!
Sorry, I should've done some more thorough searches of the forum before posting. This thread had some helpful discussion regarding the use of release flags which was new to me. This does seem to satisfy my immediate needs. However, I would agreed with the suggestions made on that thread getting more control over prerequisite execution in response to user input would be very useful.
InstallShield 2009 lets you associate prerequisites with one or more features. A feature prerequisite gets installed if a feature that contains the prerequisite is installed and if the prerequisite is not already installed on the system. You may want to take a look at this new functionality and see if it would meet your requirements.
Here are links to a few InstallShield 2009 help topics that explain more details:
The Read Me First sticky at the top of the InstallShield 2009 Community forum has links to release notes and other documentation that explains what's new in InstallShield 2009.
