Passing Variable Information

[pmcewan]

Can you pass variables either as command-line switches or in the setup.ini file to an installation built with InstallShield Limited Edition 2012 for Visual Studio and reference them in the installation to set registry entries or other items in the installation? If so how?

If not, can InstallShield Express Edition do this?

If not, what version of InstallShield can do this? And how?

[chiranjeevi]

Hello,

you can Pass Parameters to the .msi File Within Setup.exe or (you can also pass parameters directly to .msi) to an installation built with InstallShield Limited Edition 2012 for Visual Studio.

All editions of installshield will support this feature.

If you include Setup.exe as part of your installation, you may need to pass command-line parameters to the .msi package stored within Setup.exe. To pass arguments to the .msi file, use the /v option. Once you specify this option, you can list any of the supported parameters that can be passed to Msiexec.exe. For example, to create a verbose log of the installation, enter the following:

Setup.exe /v"/l*v \"c:\My Log Files\test.log\""

There are a few special formatting rules that you need to follow when passing a parameter in this way. First, you need to place a backslash (\) in front of any quotation mark that resides within existing quotes. For example, the command line above contains the following: v"/l*v \"c:\My Log Files\test.log\". Because the path to the log file is a long path, you need to use quotes. However, since you need to have quotes around the complete argument, the command-line statement fails if you do not use the backslash in front of all internal quotes.

Another formatting rule dictates that there cannot be a space between the command-line option (/v) and the arguments that you are passing, as illustrated in the example above.

In addition, if you are passing multiple parameters using the /v option, you need to separate them with a space—for example:

Setup.exe /v"/l*v \"c:\My Log Files\test.log\" /qn"

This command creates a log file and runs the installation silently.

As an alternative, you can use the /v option multiple times at the command line, once for each argument, as in the following example:

Setup.exe /v"/l*v \"c:\My Log Files\test.log\"" /v"/qn"

Please search for the topic " command line" in the index tab of ISLE help document and select passing parameters to msi, setup.exe topics for more information.

you can also use setup.ini file to pass custom setting to setup.exe. Please follow below link for more information:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768118.aspx#XSLTsection123121120120

Thank you,
Chiranjeevi

[pmcewan]

Chiranjeevi,

Thanks a lot for the information. I'll try it and let you know

Thanks

-- Paul

[pmcewan]

OK, I finally got back to this. It looks like you're talking about the parameters supported by the MSI engine. What if I had my own custom settings in the registry, and I wanted to pass command-line parameters to set these keys during the installation. Is there some way to do this?