Suggestion for Prerequisites

[MLS]

When you add your own prerequisites into the runtime system I think you should have an option in the rtm file for a de installation script. But also have the installaware runtime list have an option to not de install so you can choose depending on your requirements for the setup

[Gizm0]

Prerequisites are supposed to be installed and used on the target machine for ever on. If you think that it must be removed for some reason, you can do it with the (Un)Install MSI plugin and remove it. This is the main reason, why you don't need a uninstall script.

[MLS]

Sorry I think you misunderstood.

I understand that you can cause the msi to deinstall in the uninstall section of your own installer. But if you have to do some complex things to deinstall a particular prerequisite then you don't have to keep duplicating the code from setup to setup.

One example is deinstalling your sqlserver instance when your application is deinstalled for example.

Another is a webmedia block that is unique to your application but is dependant on several setups I understand you would need to monitor how many installs required the package but the uninstall script would handle this and remove after last app is deinstalled. If you hand to duplicate code between setups for the deinstall you could forget to check somthing with one application.

I just think having the option to add a deinstall script would help to make setups easier to produce when you need many installers that share alot of resources

[Gizm0]

You can create a generic uninstall script and just include that script to every setup you make.

[MichaelNesmith]

Also don't forget that while you can track usaga counts of a prereq within your own apps, you cannot really do that for other apps that might nonetheless be using the same prereqs.

[MLS]

On the usage counts I was mearly talking about our own internal prerequisites not ones shipped by other compays. And yes if you did deinstall based on your apps that would cause chaos

[MLS]

It has just occured to me that you could put this functionality into a prerequsite that has to deinstall with your app.

You can do it in the setup part and just check the REMOVE variable and remove instead of install. You would need checks of course in place if you ship multiple apps but this could be part of the actuall msi for the prerequisites

I presume you can include a script multiple times? In the normal section at the beggingin of install and also in the uninstall section

[Gizm0]

You can included it as many times as you want, at any part of the installation. It's like having a bunch of commands, but in a single file.