upgrade Basic MSI to InstallScripts

[#1]

Hello

In short, is there a way to upgrade a basic MSI project in IS 2008 to an InstallScripts project?

Reason being, my company has just reason taken over an appliactions source code and the installer project is a basic MSI installer. The reason I want to change to an installerScript project is I need to get the installer to work silently. Therefore, i thought I upgrade the project an InstallerScript project build and record it get the .iss and run.


Any and all ideas welcome I am new to IS and need to learn this stuff quickly

Thanks

BJHop

[RobertDickau]

Actually, a pure MSI installer is easy to deploy silently, using the /qn switch to msiexec.exe:

msiexec /i product.msi /qn

One way to pass in data for a silent installation is using properties at the command line:

msiexec /i product.msi /qn INSTALLDIR="C:\RightHere"

[#3]

Okay

Good idea and thanks for the quick reply 🙂

We currently run the setup.exe file, with I think can be kicked off by msiexec.

Question: How would I go about finding the property name that are set in the install wizard?

BJHop

[RobertDickau]

For Basic MSI, there's also something like this (the setup.exe command-line arguments page has details):

setup.exe /s /V"/qn"

To see the properties used by a project, you can look in the Property Manager view.

For a complete list of properties used by a particular installer at run time, you can use logging with the /L switch, as in:

msiexec /i prodname.msi /Lp props.txt

[#5]

Now that I have the Props.txt

Can I just set of the properties like so:

setup.exe /s /V"/qn installDir='E:\Install' NOTIFY_EVENT_SERVICE_URL='http://esb01.hgic.com:5555/soap/rpc'"


There are a 20+ properties I need to set

[RobertDickau]

You can set them all like that. You can also create what's called a "transform", which contains changes to apply to a base package. What you're doing is a common use of transforms, to override default property values set in a project.

Starting with File > New > Transform and selecting to create a "response transform" should do what you want.

[#7]

Great the transform seem like a great path to start down

Do you have any place I can learn more about this, when I google InstallShield Transforms I get very little

Secondly, if I create a response it seems to want to actaully install, which will not work b/c my DEV box is not set up like the servers where we are installing on I.E. installDir is E no C.

I had hoped the response would just capture my inputs during the interview not actually install.

Thanks,

BJHop

[RobertDickau]

Transforms are a general Windows Installer capability, and not InstallShield-specific, so searching the help for "transform" will give more information.

Response transforms are InstallShield-specific, though, so that will probably appear only in the InstallShield help. According to the help ("Create a Response Transform Panel"), no data transfer should take place when creating a response transform, so that's a bit alarming.

In any case, you should be able to tweak your transform. One tip is to use [WindowsVolume] instead of a hard-coded drive letter...

Robert

P.S. Not to make this weird or anything, but I think this is post 15,000, which says something, though I'm not sure what.

[#9]

Good stuff

I've been playing around with transforms most of the day today and there is some great potential. Trouble is not sure it really buys us too much b/c we still need to create a transform with each installer coming in and currnetly we get a server update every other day that needs to pushed out to 9 different regions; some of which have 8 servers. Each region would need a different transform b/c the service endpoints are different for each region.

These service endpoints are set/retrieved durring the install interview, and the reason I looking for a way to get a one click installer.

Looks like we may have to wait until the source code it truly handled off, then I start making some changes to msi project itself, maybe point to an ini or xml config to get the property values.

thanks for you help and good on you for post number 15K

BJHop

[#10]

Good stuff

I've been playing around with transforms most of the day today and there is some great potential. Trouble is not sure it really buys us too much b/c we still need to create a transform with each installer coming in and currnetly we get a server update every other day that needs to pushed out to 9 different regions; some of which have 8 servers. Each region would need a different transform b/c the service endpoints are different for each region.

These service endpoints are set/retrieved durring the install interview, and the reason I looking for a way to get a one click installer.

Looks like we may have to wait until the source code it truly handled off, then I start making some changes to msi project itself, maybe point to an ini or xml config to get the property values.

thanks for you help and good on you for post number 15K

BJHop

[#11]

Good stuff

I've been playing around with transforms most of the day today and there is some great potential. Trouble is not sure it really buys us too much b/c we still need to create a transform with each installer coming in and currnetly we get a server update every other day that needs to pushed out to 9 different regions; some of which have 8 servers. Each region would need a different transform b/c the service endpoints are different for each region.

These service endpoints are set/retrieved durring the install interview, and the reason I looking for a way to get a one click installer.

Looks like we may have to wait until the source code it truly handled off, then I start making some changes to msi project itself, maybe point to an ini or xml config to get the property values.

thanks for you help and good on you for post number 15K

BJHop

ps i've tried posting this a couple time now not sure what the issue is