Another issue to address, I've got my custom actions working now on a development machine - but how do i get them to work on a "virgin machine"?
It feels a little chicken and eggish - i need a suite pre-requisite to install the VC 2011 runtime dlls and probably .NET 4.5 that my custom action dll is using...
Hi Michael, Unless i am mistaken, the importing of the prerequisite will not help me as this is to associate with a feature/package I need the prerequisites to allow me to make a decision as to which feature/package is available and since the prerequisites are only installed when the "install" button is clicked, cannot do this. Regards, /SiD
Oh, I missed that critical part. Generally I compile my extensions and conditions and so forth using static libraries. This way they do not require the vc runtime to be on the target machine. My articles on the InstallTalk blog talk about making this configuration change in the Express edition of Visual Studio, and it's pretty similar in the full editions.
I've ended up doing the following, convoluted as it may be, it seems to work - just need to work out the update procedure now.
1) Create a basic MSI installer that has no UI, pre-requisites of VC11 runtime and .NET 4.0 client. This installs 2 files - the ones used by my suite to check for SQL server and allows them to be COM registered as they use .NET framework from the custom action DLL via interop. I include the suite and 2nd installer as additional files in the disk 1 folder. Final custom action of launching the suite installer with no wait. 2) Suite installer can now run with a UI and use the custom action DLLs, safe in knowledge that they are properly registered. Depending on what it finds, an option to install a "first machine" or "client machine" are offered with a button press to select. The different buttons set the different feature requirements in my suite which then controls whether or not to install SQL server before launching my main application install. I've added the billboards from the main installer to the progress screen in the suite as the main installer runs with no UI. Suite does not register itself in add/remove programs. 3) main installer runs silently with a command line parameter indicating if it was a "server" or "client" install.
Simples!!
So what i now have left is a) updates - i think i only need to worry about the main application at this point and can use FNC for this. b) Ideally i would like to uninstall the "Helper" installation that started this all off at the end of installation.
