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I'm using InstallShield 2010 to create a patch of my product. There are many changes so I am using the patch design view to create a MSP patch that differences my original product release MSI and the current MSI. My installer uses the XML file changes InstallShield feature to write XML file values during installation. Some of the values written are collected via custom dialogs during install. My issue is that when applying the patch these values are NULL because there are no user dialogs shown during the MSP patch installation. What happens is since the values are not populated from user input, the MSP will put blank values into the XML which essentially deletes the values that the user specified during the initial installation. Can I add dialogs to the patch so I can re-collect the necessary values from the user during patch install?

One thing I was thinking was to write a boot strapper batch script and pass the property values via an msiexec.exe call in the manor of PROPERTY="VALUE", but I was hoping identify some alternatives.

Andy Arismendi
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Generally you should have searches read the current values into the properties. You might be able to do this with the XML System Search support in InstallShield, or you may have to write a custom action. (The XML System Search support doesn't handle namespaces as well as the XML File Changes does).

Once you build this change into the Upgraded installer and patch, your patch should similarly run these searches before running the XML changes. In full UI maintenance scenarios this may have the benefit of showing up as default values already populated, but make sure of that too.

Michael Urman
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  • Ah didn't think of re-searching my XML file. That's a good idea. I'll give that a shot, thanks! – Andy Arismendi Feb 08 '11 at 15:12
  • I'll go better then that. Read the XML into PROPTEMP and have a Type 51 custom action that assigns it to PROPREAL only if PROPREAL doesn't have a value. This makes sure you'll be able to pass PROPREAL=FOO at the command line and have it not get wiped by the XML search. It's the Remembered yet Overridable property pattern. – Christopher Painter Feb 10 '11 at 01:24
  • Michael, unfortunately re-searching my XML files for user defined properties won't work because some of the properties are substrings of the XML node values e.g. http://[USERDEFINED]/website. It looks like the only options I have now is to either write custom code to parse the pre-installed XML field values or find a way to get my custom dialogs to show during the patch installation. – Andy Arismendi Feb 11 '11 at 21:24
  • You could always remember these properties in some other fashion, such as serialized directly into values in the registry which would be much easier to search for. However that trades implementation complexity for duplicated data which can get out of sync, and neither option is desirable. – Michael Urman Feb 13 '11 at 15:50