Hi all,
I need to install SQLXML as a custom prerequisite. Can someone point me to a discussion on how to do this? I can't seem to find any examples or tutorials or discussions to get me started.
Thanx!
WNC
Check out:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165429.aspx
This topic talks about adding custom prereqs....
-Robert Schoen (Microsoft Visual Basic QA)
Did I understand this right? Is it true that in order to provide a custom prerequisite, I have to install this prerequisite package on each build machine? Is there no way to include this information only within the installation project? If so, this is unacceptable. I need/want to be able to drop my solution on any machine with VS 2005 and build it so that it builds the code and produces an installation. I don't want to have a list of things that need to be installed on each machine that wants to build the solution.
WNC
I believe there is not an actual "install" but there is going to be some file and package copying needed. For example you will need to copy the product and package manifest files, along with your redistributable files into the "\SDK\v2.0\Bootstrapper\" directory on each machine that you will want to work from. From what you are saying this sounds like something you want to avoid but believe this is the only option if you want to be able to build the installation...on any of your machines with VS and have the custom prereq stuff included.
-Robert Schoen (Microsoft Visual Basic QA)
Sorry for the Dupe - there was some strange display issues occuring while posting this....
Anyway - Believe you are stuck with copying the product and package manifest files, along with your redistributable files, into a special folder "\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bootstrapper" folder...on each machine that you want to build and produce an installation package.
-Robert Schoen (Microsoft Visual Basic QA)
OK, well thanx for responding. I've decided not to use the MS prerequisite mechanism. I'm using another tool now I found (on GotDotNet I think) that is completely xml driven and doesn't have this problem. This seems to work wonderfully, as I am now detecting and installing if needed the additional items our product requires (.NET 2.0, Windows Installer 3.1, SQL Express, mdac 2.8, acrobat reader and sqlxml).
Thanx again.
Glad that you have a solution. I would be interested in knowing what you are using however. Would you be able to provide that information?
Thanks!
Sure thing:
http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/dotNetInstaller.asp
Another nice thing is you can modify the source code for this. We include the exe for this in our installation project, and as a post build step, publish this exe as setup.exe, renaming the msi output from the installation project to _setup.msi. The bootstrapper (setup.exe) is configured to run this after it has successfully completed its work. An xml configuration file accompanies the installation to detect and install prereqs as needed. We've modifed the exe to remove the user's ability to modify the list of prereq's (the "Advanced" button).
All the best,
WNC
