.Net 3.0 Boot Strapper

[NZScottie]

Hi there,

I am hoping someone can help point me in the right direction or give me some good advice on the issue I have. I am very new to installers and how they work.

What I am trying to do is use the boot strapper for .Net 3.0 from Microsoft instead of the full redistributable package that is built into the Application Runtimes section.

I would like to be able to have the boot strapper run during the Check/Install Application Pre-Requisites section as with the other Application Runtimes.

The reason I would like to be able to do this is so that I can minimise the users download size from our web server. Because of the nature of the application and the numbers that we are expecting to download the application we have calculated that we could be doing terabytes of data transfer a month if we include the full .Net 3.0 runtime. If I am able to minimise this by using the boot strapper, this will greatly reduce server load.

I have tried a couple of things already which have varying levels of success.

One thing I have tried is to have a setup using identical code for the check script and then modifying the setup script, which basically has a Install file call to the $TEMP$ folder and then a Run call on that executable. The behaviour I see from this is that it doesn't run the boot strapper application the first time the installer is run. If I then run the installer again it will find the boot strapper and run it successfully.

After hunting around (and turning on the help balloons) I noticed a message for the Run calls dialog box stating that "If you are creating/installing the object referenced in this field, please remember that Apply Install executes in your MSIcode".

The suggestion of moving the command after the Apply Install command did help solve the problem to a degree. Though now it seems I have to have all the calls for checking located after this command. Also having it here has some undesired effect. If the install from the .NET boot strapper fails and the installer terminates then there is no rollback to the state before the install. i.e. there are still files, folders, and shortcuts present on the machine which is not ideal.

Am I doing this right or is there a better way to go about this. Any suggestions anyone has will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Scott

[neillans]

Interesting idea.

One thing I have tried is to have a setup using identical code for the check script and then modifying the setup script, which basically has a Install file call to the $TEMP$ folder and then a Run call on that executable. The behaviour I see from this is that it doesn't run the boot strapper application the first time the installer is run. If I then run the installer again it will find the boot strapper and run it successfully.

Change this part; add the bootstrapper (and required files) as support files, and then use the support file variable to get the exact temporary directory.
Details of support file operation can be found under "Modifying Support Files" in the help file.

[NZScottie]

Thanks for the quick reply it is very much appreciated.

This is exactly what I needed to know and it is working just how I want it to.

This has given me some more knowledge into how the product works which is very helpful.

Great stuff!