InstallAware

Dear Francesco,
Thanks for all the help & support.

Cloning the base project, defining update packs & building patch is understood.
So i directly go to the problem.

I have two cases .exe & .msi
I'll use following names for my product Origional installer & patch.
Base project output is MyProduct.exe OR MyProduct.msi
Patch project output is MyProduct_Patch.exe OR MyProduct_Patch.msi

CASE 1 : Build both base project & patch project as a .exe
a. Build Myproduct.exe and installed successfully (Base project).
b. In the patch project, specify the patch reference as MyProduct.exe, no issue in building the patch.
c. successfully build patch MyProduct_patch.exe.
d. manually apply the patch, My changes applied.

CASE 2 : Build both base project & patch project as a .msi
a. I have build MyProduct.msi and installed succesfully (Base project).
b. In the patch project, specify the patch reference as MyProduct.msi
c. I am getting following error during patch build.
Error during build: No compatible base packages found for upgrade package

and
How to specify the output of the patch build as .msp ? I mean Myproduct_patch.msp
Since we can't ship my patch as .exe, We used to ship the patch as .msp.

Appreciate your help.
Regards
SITL

Dear SITL,

when adding an InstallAware setup to your project as patch reference, it's just enough to specify the "EXE" format of the setup package used as reference. InstallAware will extract the internal MSI from it and without the need of any other action.

You may "Eventually" use an un-compressed build layout with the "Patch Reference" and in this case, you can specify the MSI file present from this layout. At any rate, this second option is not necessary and also useless, if you already have the "EXE" format.

InstallAware will generate always an EXE file with a Patch Build. The MSP file gets embedded with the generated "PATCH.EXE" and it's not necessary any other action on your side.

Please note that both "MSI and MSP" formats cannot be double signed as required by "Microsoft’s New Code Signing Policy". Due of this, it's recommended to use the EXE format when distributing packages.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/32288.windows-enforcement-of-authenticode-code-signing-and-timestamping.aspx

Hope this helps you.

Regards

Dear Francesco,

Thanks for your answer.
Until now our peoples were using .msi & .msp formats, so I tried that.
I'm fine with your answer, Lets keep it aside.
========================
Now i have one clarification.
My origional (Base project ) build, MyProduct.exe is about 180 MB
& for the patch, I have just edited one text file and made just one line change.
the size of patch build, MyProduct_patch1.exe is around 50 MB.
What do you say ?
Appreciate your comments.

Regards
SITL