Working With Components And Features - Symantec WINDOWS INSTALLER EDITOR 7.0 SP2 - REFERENCE FOR WISE INSTALLATION STUDIO V1.0 Installation Manual

Working With Components and Features

Windows Installer Editor Reference
How does Windows Installer Editor support advertisement?
In Windows Installer Editor, you can set default advertisement on a per-feature basis on
the Feature Details dialog box. If you advertise features, however, you must include
Windows Installer function calls within the application to perform a feature-level
installation of the necessary files when an advertised entry point is invoked.
For information on coding an application for advertisement, see Advertisement in the
Windows Installer SDK Help. Microsoft Windows Installer provides command lines for
advertising an entire application. See Command Line Options in the Windows Installer
SDK Help.
How do I use advanced features?
Most advanced Windows Installer features require you to use Windows Installer function
calls in an application. Other features require specific operating systems, such as
Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008.
Example: You could add a menu option for a spell checker, but design the installation so
that the files necessary for the spell checker are not installed by default. When the end
user selects the spell checker menu option, your code can use Windows Installer
functions to install the necessary files on demand.
While Windows Installer Editor can help you bundle an application into an installation
package, it cannot help you design, develop, and code an application to use Microsoft
Windows Installer APIs. Use the Windows Installer Software Development Kit (SDK)
online help, which is installed with Windows Installer Editor, as a reference for coding
Windows Installer functionality into an application.
See also:
About Microsoft Windows Installer
In Microsoft Windows Installer terminology, a feature is a distinct part of an application's
functionality, which end users can usually choose to install. (Example: A feature could be
a spell-checker, a thesaurus, or a collection of clip art.) You create and organize features
yourself.
See Strategies for Organizing Files Into Features
A component is a basic installation unit that is always installed or uninstalled as a
coherent piece. Windows Installer tracks each component by the component ID, a GUID.
See About GUIDs.
Only one instance of a component is installed on a destination computer, allowing
several features or applications to share the same component without installing multiple
instances of it. Components include single files, a group of related files, COM objects,
registry keys, shortcuts, resources, libraries grouped in a directory, or shared pieces of
code such as DAO. When you add files to an installation, components are created based
on a component rule set you select. (Example: You can create a new component for
each new file added to the installation, or you can group related resources, such as help
files, into one component.)
You can reorganize components or create them manually by using Setup Editor >
Components tab.
See Component Rules on page 57.
Windows Installer and .NET Technologies
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