I am making an install package for a .Net web application and it needs to work on Vista. Purchased Installshield 2010 for its' promised Vista support. Target system is Vista Business SP1, 32 bit. In my IS project I created a website in Server Configuration>IIS>Web Sites, In that website I am adding an Application with same name as the website.
When the installation completes it creates a Virtual Directory instead and my .net application fails to run until I manually convert it to application in IIS.
My install packages behave almost exactly the same whether I am creating a Virtual Directory or Application in the IS project, the end result is always a virtual directory.
The one difference is that when the IS project has Application, installation also fails to set the default document though it is specified in the IS project property. Virtual directory sets it correctly.
Is this an install shield bug, or was I supposed to set something else in my IS project?
Adding applications in the IIS view in InstallShield 2010 will always create an application element in the IIS applicationHost.config configuration file in the system.webServer/sites/site[@name="web site"] element. A virtualDirectory element is also created as a child of the application that is created, as this is required (the path for the virtual directory is "/").
If a virtual directory is created with the IIS view, only a virtualDirectory element is created.
The changes made to applicationHost.config by InstallShield are similar to the changes made when creating an application or virtual directory directly through the IIS manager.
Does this behavior occur with a sample project? Is there something specific changed in applicationHost.config or web.config that manually editing the application in the IIS manager exposes? What steps are you taking to "manually convert" the created IIS item to an application with IIS manager?
