Folks,
I am developing a deployment project with Visual Studio 2005 that produces
an .msi installer. I am not understanding how to create some customized
install time actions that I want include, and want to know if there is a
better way to achieve some results. The following are the install time tasks
I am attempting to perform.
1. I defined a custom action to register and unregister an ActiveX Custom
Control (.ocx) after installation, using MS provided sample regsvr32.exe.
However during the installation, I included regsrv32.exe in the project for
maximum portability, which as far I can tell already exists on the target
systems. This also results in seeing DOS boxes pop up during installation. Is
there a better way to register the control, e.g. with VB script, C#, etc?
2. I included a temporary file, 'myconfig_.ini', which is consumed by a
target program upon first start up. If the file is included in the installer,
every time the user selects the program from the Start menu, the .msi
installer attempts to recreate the file. AFAIK, there is no property setting
that will mark the file as install time only. As a work around, I created a
gen_config_file.exe, which generates this file.
3. Under 'User Interface' I added a stock Dialog, 'Textboxes (A)', with
properties set to accept a Username and Password combination. The layout is
set, and the text box behavior enabling a 'mask' of the password text is
unavailable. Is there a way to create a custom dialog that has the functions
I require? I recall reading in the MS documentation, layout modifications to
the stock Dialogs is not possible.
Thanks,
BEA
