Other misc questions going from IS to IA

[jhogsett]

I'm evaluating InstallAware as a replacement for InstallShield. So far I haven't been able to find how to do the things below. These are critical to our being able to use any company's installer. We're able to do these now with InstallShield but it's a kludge and requires it being run by a master executable.

1) We need to be able to run the .Net 2.0 installer with the /qn switch so it doesn't display any UI. I haven't found out how to do that yet.

2) We need to supress reboots - the installer can't reboot the users's system - but we need a way to determine if a reboot is required, such as an exit code.

3) The installer must run As Administrator on Vista (in order to write to Program Files) but when the user clicks the Run check box on the finish panel, it needs to run as the locally logged in user.

4) We need our users to be able to download a tiny bootstrap installer that inspects their sytem and downloads the components appropriate for their system (right now, it just chooses whether to install our app + MDAC 2.7 or our app alone). I haven't found a bootstrap install feature in InstallAware.

I'm looking forward to the answers as we are eager to move away from InstallShield.

Thanks!

[CandiceJones]

Virtually all the features you describe below, with the exception of the Run as local user, are built-in to InstallAware, and part of the core product functionality that is exposed in the IDE.

Did you look into the IDE at all?

1) Take a look at the Application Runtimes view and .NET 2.0 is right there in front of you. InstallAware is unique in that it won't display any external UI but it will actually capture and display the progress natively in your OWN setup wizard, so you can show whichever progress billboards you like while .NET is installing.

2) Result of the SUCCESS variable in the MSIcode script; reboots are by default left to user choice in the Finish dialog only when necessary; you can override this behavior in MSIcode.

3) Running as admin is not a problem; you can also use Run Program As to run the setup in a different context than the current elevated context. This will probably be the only tricky thing for you to do.

4) Again right in the IDE, on the Project tab, click Web Deploy. Its exactly what you want. To find out more about InstallAware's bootstrapping features, read our MSIcode scripting whitepaper. The MSIcode script you see is essentially spelling out everything that InstallAware's bootstrapper does for you. All purple commands in that script are generated into an MSI database which control is passed to when Apply Install is called in your script.

Hope that helps!

[jhogsett]

No, in fact I haven't even installed it yet (just kidding! :-)

Admittedly I've only been running the program now for about 2 hours, but I went through most of the IDE.

I saw and added the .Net 2.0 runtime ok but I didn't see any options to either allow or suppress its displayed UI.

Is it true that InstallAware always suppresses all UI on application runtimes?

Do you have a tip for how I would override the reboot behavior to prevent reboots (including from the .Net 2.0 installer)? Depending on how we install, the user may never see the finish panel (because we may need to install with the silent command line switch).

Can you suggest how I would communicate the need to reboot to an external (parent) executable?

I understand I can run the setup itself in different user contexts but can you provide any assistance as to how I would run our application As Invoker when the installer itself is run As Administrator? (I think maybe this isn't possible at all on Vista but I hope I'm wrong!)

Thanks for the suggestion to look into Web Deploy. I ran into it in the IDE but it refered to "media" items so I presumed it wasn't the same as a bootstrap installer, but it sounds like it is. Does it require the user to install an ActiveX control like InstallShield's one-click-install architecture ?

Thanks!

[CandiceJones]

InstallAware indeed supresses and natively captures progress UI on all application runtimes.

To prevent reboots, just edit the MSIcode script. In the MSIcode editor, there are two code navigation drop-downs on top of the actual script. Select Region on the left one and Finish on the right one. This takes you squarely to the part where you can just comment out the statement "Reboot Computer" or do anything else you want to do.

You can return a code from your InstallAware setup using the Terminate with Exit Code command. This way you can convey reboot/no need states to an invoker.

InstallAware's Partial Web Deploy is free from kludges of all kinds and does not need any OCX controls, etc! Just read our Partial Web Deployment whitepaper on our website for all the details. The whitepaper describes everything in great detail and can be downloaded from the Support/Publications section.