cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
ussraf
Level 6

Runtime Change a Feature's Description

Hello,

Is there an easy way to change the feature's display name in runtime?

Thanks.
Labels (1)
0 Kudos
(4) Replies
MichaelU
Level 12 Flexeran
Level 12 Flexeran

Assuming you're asking if there's a way to specify these names, rather than if there's a way to change them dynamically at installation time, yes. Select each feature in the Setup Design or Features view of the Installation Designer, and edit the Display Name property.

If you're asking about doing this dynamically, I don't think there's a good way for a Basic MSI project, but there may be one for InstallScript setups. See FeatureAddItem and its example for an idea down that road, if you're using an InstallScript project.
0 Kudos
ussraf
Level 6

MichaelU wrote:
Assuming you're asking if there's a way to specify these names, rather than if there's a way to change them dynamically at installation time, yes. Select each feature in the Setup Design or Features view of the Installation Designer, and edit the Display Name property.

If you're asking about doing this dynamically, I don't think there's a good way for a Basic MSI project, but there may be one for InstallScript setups. See FeatureAddItem and its example for an idea down that road, if you're using an InstallScript project.


Oh, yes, thank you Mike, I'm actually asking the second - dynamically. The only one idea I can have is using the setup.exe, i.e. when setup.exe has extracted the .msi I use some MsiOpenDatabase() call to change the .msi database first.

However, it wasn't that possible for I don't see anyway that I can modify the setup.exe generated by InstallShield IDE or adding some callbacks to that.
0 Kudos
MichaelU
Level 12 Flexeran
Level 12 Flexeran

Yeah, in MSI this gets really messy really fast. Ignoring problems with digital signatures, we don't have hooks for that. You could work around it by using a bootstrapper (perhaps an InstallScript setup with no footprint) which could open and modify the setup it was going to install. Of course doing that opens you up to package code violations, so it would be better to create a transform and apply it on the command-line that the bootstrapper invokes. However (back to digital signatures) as of Windows 7 when a base setup is signed, an unsigned transform causes an Unknown Publisher warning.

That said, if you have a known set of possible names, you may be able to represent them in a set of pre-built (optionally pre-signed) transforms. Then either provide instructions to select the transform, or create a bootstrapper that can choose between them.
0 Kudos
ussraf
Level 6

Thank you. This let me know what can be done and what not..:p
0 Kudos