What's the best approach to combining a 32 bit and 64 bit installer?
Currently I have two installers. They install the same files. The only difference is, in one of the installers, all the components are marked as 64 bit so they'll install to 64 bit locations. So, my question is this: What is the best way to go about combining these two installers? I've already read another thread where it was suggested that "Suite/Advanced UI" be used. Are there any other ways of doing this that don't make use of a special type of InstallShield project? Or is that the only way to accomplish this task?
While there are some hacks that I won't recommend, in general you cannot target 64-bit locations AND successfully install on a 32-bit system in a Windows Installer package. Heath Stewart's blog covers this well: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/heaths/archive/2008/01/15/different-packages-are-required-for-different-processor-architectures.aspx. The recommendation to use a Suite/Advanced UI project is one that lets you create two MSI packages, then give it to your users as a single .exe file that chooses between them. Microsoft often just provides multiple downloads to their users, and it's certainly possible to create a simple version of the automatic selection in InstallScript, or sometimes with PRQ files in a Basic MSI project. But our typical recommendation is to use a Suite/Advanced UI project.
