Recently I have been looking into performing a commandline script/utility (CCNet) to build my installation(s) for me.
In doing so, I have my .ism project checked into source control. along with my scripts.
I narrowed down which files need to be checked into source control and which ones do not. In doing so, I have my project file configured to generate a new package code so that if I make minor changes a minor upgrade will occur.
I noticed that if I have my .ism checked into vss, the InstallShield Developer UI will ask if I want to save the project before I exit, (if I have just built a new installer). My guess this is so that the new package code that got generated can be saved to the new .ism.
What I need to know is that if I have my project .ism checked into vss, and if I do a command line build, will it generate a new package code for me ? If not, how would I tell it to generate one for me?
I did notice there are way to specify variables and using ini files. However, I am certain that you can't tell a variable to generate a new guid (and I know there isn't a command-line utility to do so?) 😉
Any help/experience on this would be appreciated.
My end goal is to achieve the same thing that I am doing by command line instead of keeping the project file checked out, opening up InstallShield developer and clicking on my individual releases to just turn around and shut it back down.
Your source control program may have a command line interface you can use in your script to checkout/checkin the .ism file. Microsoft Visual SourceSafe has ss.exe to accomplish this.
I have a feeling that is what I am going to need to do. I noticed that after I run the command line utility for InstallShield, it absolutely needs to have write access to that file since it will change the read only flag on the .ism file 😛
You can check out and check in through commad like for VSS you can use ss for TFS you can use TF.
In the Release --> Product Configuration you can set to generate package code to "YES" for generating package code every time so you saved ism project with this configuration the package code will change if you build throgh command also (iscmdbld -p ProjectName.ism -y 1.2.3.4)
