Deployment questions

[Pete Griffint]

Howdy,
I'm finding the Windows Installer documentation a bit baffling, so here are a
couple of questions.

(1) I want to have a "Path" key in my app's settings in the registry
which is set at install time with the path to which my app is installed.
I reckon I should be able to do this by the ordinary registry editor in
a deployment project in VS, by creating a string value and setting it to
some Windows Installer variable - anyone know which one?

(2) My app comes with data sets A,B. I want people to be able to download other
datasets C,D,... if they wish. What's the right way to set this up, so that
* C,D are installed alone without the main program, but the install program
verifies that the main app is installed before installing them
* if the user uninstalls the main app, then additional datasets C,D,... are
also removed.

Thanks all!
Pete

[Nick Malik]

Create an installer project. Then, right-click the project in the project
explorer and select View -> Registry. This gives you a dialog for adding
settings to the registry.

Or, you can add a class to your application that is called by setup
application at the end of the setup process, and you can place the
registration code in that class. The helper class also provides a way to
execute code on uninstall.

I have no idea what you mean by datasets existing before the application is,
but in general, if a user downloads a dataset BEFORE installing your app,
that dataset should still exist on their computer AFTER they uninstall your
app.

HTH,
--- Nick

"Pete Griffint" <pe***********@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8a**************************@posting.google.c om...

Howdy,
I'm finding the Windows Installer documentation a bit baffling, so here are a couple of questions.

(1) I want to have a "Path" key in my app's settings in the registry
which is set at install time with the path to which my app is installed.
I reckon I should be able to do this by the ordinary registry editor in
a deployment project in VS, by creating a string value and setting it to
some Windows Installer variable - anyone know which one?

(2) My app comes with data sets A,B. I want people to be able to download other datasets C,D,... if they wish. What's the right way to set this up, so that * C,D are installed alone without the main program, but the install program verifies that the main app is installed before installing them
* if the user uninstalls the main app, then additional datasets C,D,... are also removed.

Thanks all!
Pete