Planning the Installation

[Gary]

Hi

I Have a question about installation strategy that I wonder if you could help me with. I Have Series Of products on CD that are basically the same but have different content. They all share the same Media Player and Directory structures but have different content such that..

Product-1 has Player123.exe \\ContentDirectory\\ contains.... mediaFile_A MediaFile_B etc...
Product-2 has Player123.exe \\ContentDirectory\\ contains.... mediaFile_D MediaFile_E etc...
Product-3 has Player123.exe \\ContentDirectory\\ contains....mediaFile_J MediaFile_K etc...
Product-4 has Player123.exe \\ContentDirectory\\ contains....mediaFile_P MediaFile_Q etc...
Product-5 has Player123.exe \\ContentDirectory\\ contains.... mediaFile_U MediaFile_V etc...

If a User Buys Product-3 and installs it first Then subsquently buys Product-2 and Product-4 ( just as example )
and Installs those... I want those installs not to copy the player123.exe or Create any additonal directories, short-cuts etc...
but only copy the New "Content Files" to the \\ContentDirectory\\ is this Possible? These products will initially be Sold on CD. I've read the White paper on Patches I suspect that is the way to go But I'm not sure. you guys have a pretty cool product I'm just trying to figure out
How to best accomplish this. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.
Gary

[Gizm0]

The best way is to detect if another installation is already done on the target machine. You can detect this by MSICode. If you find one of your products already installed, you can use If statements and include only the files/actions (like creating shortcut etc) YOU want to be installed on the target machine, using again MSICode. Patches is a solution, but i would suggest as CCP of InstallAware to use different installations with different GUID and Product Codes for each one. You can easily have 1 simple project file, use Compiler Variables to determine which files to include (MEDIA_A, MEDIA_B etc) and have a batch build create all your setups by one click.

If you got confused or you think this is "too much" for you, you can contact me at my email pkefal (at) installaware (dot) com, describe your requirements in details and i'll reply to you as soon as possible with a project scope and a reasonable cost to create the setup for you.