A little additional information I forgot to mention: The custom action that sets the value of DataFolder is also run in the Execute sequence "After CostInitialize". I have set the action to Execute only once. I have assumed that it would always execute only in the UI sequence if I was running in full UI mode and running it in Execute was only for silent mode operation. However, in a test application I'm getting similar results when I include it in the Execute sequence but no problems at all if I exclude it from that sequence. Completely baffled here. ... View more

Hi enanrum, Thanks for the reply! I was able to find a way to do it with Custom Actions and, yes, it was tricky. This is a huge installer (9000+ files, 600 components, etc.). I had actually thought about your suggestion early on as a very good way to do it but it turns out that the number of files and components involved were just too many to make it practical. Here's what ended up working for me: - Create a folder named MyData in [CommonAppDataFolder] - Create the Config folder in MyData - Look at the directory table and get the identifier for the MyData folder(make it all uppercase if it isn't already) - Create a public property that has the same name as this directory identifier - Make sure that the value of this public property is null (delete the value) - Create a "Set Property" custom action that references the public property - In that custom action create a condition that is true when installing the 32 bit version of the product on 64 bit Windows (ISReleaseFlags><"32BitVersion" And VersionNT64) - When this condition is true set the value of the property to [CommonAppDataFolder]MyData (x86) - I ran this in both the UI Sequence and the Execute sequence and set it to "Execute only once". This worked but, as you said, it is tricky, undocumented and a PITA for something so simple as renaming a directory at run time. It's not that it's all that difficult once you figure out what to do, it's that, to my knowledge, it's not documented anywhere so you're left to just wonder and experiment until you stumble upon something that works. You'd think InstallShield would have a built in CA for something like this or at least document it clearly somewhere. ... View more

Hi enanrum, Thanks for the reply. I agree with you completely. I have a small test installer that I use to try out different approaches and I inadvertently deleted an entry from its directory table once and, like you said, only found out about it after I built and ran it. Trying to straighten it out was a nightmare. That's why I posted here because I don't really want to risk that kind of outcome on the actual project. Given Installshield's propensity to create new directory entries at the drop of a hat and then never get rid of them, I'd think some sort of utility would be a necessary addition to the product. But it's looking like that doesn't exist. ... View more

Hi Skolte, I appreciate the help! I'm thinking that perhaps the 0 byte files will be the solution that best matches the requirements in this case. And I agree that a new build will need to be done each time changes are made to the build environment. We were just looking for a way to not have to actually modify the project itself, which both of those solutions seem to accomplish. If you want to experiment a little more with the behavior, the situation I set up was to create a folder with two 0 byte .txt files in it, say one.txt and two.txt. I also placed an empty sub folder in it. Then I created a component that dynamically linked to the top folder and specified in the dynamic link dialog box to include *.*. That worked fine and, on the target machine, I got both one.txt and two.txt and the empty folder (as I had expected). Then I went back to the dynamic link dialog box and, in the "exclude files with this pattern" area, I entered one.txt . What I then got on the target machine was the file two.txt but the empty folder wasn't created. What I had expected was to see two.txt and the empty folder since the exclusion was only for one.txt. Thanks again - you've been very helpful on a couple of issues I've had. ... View more

Hi Skolte, Thanks for the reply! I might not have explained the problem very well. The behavior that the client wants is to dynamically link to a folder and (dynamically) "include all subfolders". They want empty as well as non empty folders that exist in the "tree" to be created on the target machine. Over time, they want to be able to add additional folders into this tree - some empty, some not - and have all added folders (empty and not empty) be created on the target machine. So I could go in right now and explicitly create the empty folders that they currently have, as you suggested (though this goes against their wish to have all subfolders created dynamically). This would solve the problem for right now. But, if they add some new empty folders into the tree in the future, they'd have to modify the project to explicitly create them every time they did that rather than just do a rebuild. The behavior that I described in the original post just seems wrong to me. So if you have any additional thoughts I'd appreciate hearing them. Thanks again for taking the time and effort to respond - I appreciate it! ... View more

Hi Cary, Thanks again for the help! If I'm understanding correctly, you have just solved my problem! Education is a powerful thing. I'm brand new to IS and, as you stated, wasn't aware of how the sequencing is handled. So let me repeat what I heard and make sure I got it. It sounds like all of the files for every installed component will be copied to the target machine in one operation. At some time after that, all of the search and replace actions will take place. If that's the case then, yes, I should be able to choose almost any component, associate all of the Replacement Sets with it and be confident that none of those search and replace actions will not run until after all files from all components have been moved to the target machine. Is that correct? If so, problem solved! Is there any guarantee of the order the search and replace operations themselves are executed in. For example if there are three of these operations targeted at a particular file, are they executed in the order they show up in the explorer? I was assuming (and you know what that means) that all operations associated with a component would be handled when that component was installed rather than having all like operations for the entire set of components grouped together. As one last question, could you point me to the documentation on the sequence numbering and descriptions. It sounds like something I definitely need to understand better. Thanks again very much - I really appreciate your help. ... View more

Hi, Thanks for the reply! I don't think the technique you referred to will work for my current issue but it is definitely a good one to know. The situation I have is a bit complicated to explain. We are in the process of updating an InstallScript project (IS 7.1) to IS 2012/ Basic MSI. The project supports about 15 different languages. Each language contains a couple of .ini files that have specific information for that language. The .ini files are all named the same and, at run time, are written to a couple of different directories. So far, so good. For example, if English is specified, the English files are written to 2 different folders. If Spanish was being built then the Spanish files (of the same name but different contents) would be written to the same two folders. The problem is that the .ini files contain some symbolic information that needs to be replaced with values determined at runtime. The current approach we are taking is to use the Text File Changes feature to do a search and replace. This works well generally. The easiest way to make this replacement would be to wait until all the components that may write files to these directories have installed and then do the search and replace on whatever files are written to the two directories. Since the "Replacement Sets" need to be associated with a specific component, it would be very convenient if I could create one Replacement Set with all the appropriate Replacements, and then associate that Replacement Set with a component that I know will install after all the other components that write files to the two folders. If I can't do this, I will need to create a Replacement Set and Replacements for each and every component that writes the multiple .ini files to the directories, and it turns out to be a large number - so laziness is driving my question! Perhaps there's a better way to do this? Thanks for any help you can provide. I doubt that my explaination is very clear so if you need more information please post back. ... View more

Hi SK, Thanks for the good advice. I have finally figured out what is going on. The project that we converted from IS7 has about 70 features. Many of them are configured to be non-visible. It turns out that the Display value (in the Feature table) for an invisible feature is 0 whereas the values for visible features are all greater than zero. When the list of features are displayed in either the Features view or the Setup Design view, the invisible features show up at the top of the list (value of 0). I guess this is reasonable though it seems to differ from older behavior. The problem is that if you are in either the Feature or Setup Design view and use Up to move a visible feature up the feature list, you can move it right up into the invisible group. Again, maybe that's OK. However, if you switch to the other view, the feature will only have moved up to the bottom of the invisible features. So when you look at the order of the features in this case, it's different - the visible feature you moved up to, say, the top of the invisible featues in the Setup Design view will show up at the bottom of the invisible features in the Feature view. I don't think this behavior is intuitive or what anyone would expect. Once you know how it works you can deal with it but it sure threw me for a loop for quite awhile. Thanks again for all your help! ... View more