Installation Package - what to include

[3G]

Is there a technique for determining the files, libs, etc. that absolutely have to be included in an install package? For example, if there are a group of desktops that all have Win 2000 with Office XP Professional, the things are already going to have a bunch of DLLs that are required by any VB app I might wish to install.
I'm concerned about including a file from my development environment that overwrites a perfectly fine existing dll and trashes the workstation.
I've been using the Pkg & Deployment Wizard and am considering Installshield or Wise, but I'm not sure that addresses the issue.

Thanks -

 

[Blauther]

I have played around with a few different installation programs, and found that I had the most control over what gets installed where, with Installshield. Unfortunately, because of the "DLL Hell" syndrome, it is very tough to distribute an application to a diverse set of OS's. In theory, if a version number of a dll that you are installing is higher than the one on the users machine...It should work fine. I believe that the PDW in VB won't install a dll with a lower version than the one already on the machine. You have complete control over this feature with installshield.

One option for you would be to install all the dll's, ocx's and other dependencies into the same folder as the exe. When the calling program looks for one of these controls, it looks in the current folder first, before it goes out to the system32 folder to look for the required file. This would allow MSoffice to use the files from the system32 folder, and your program to use it's own files from the folder from which it runs.

My best advice to you is to set up a test environment with fresh installs of the OS's that you are deploying to, and test your installations on these machines.
If you want some ideas about setting up a test environment, let me know...I specialize in this.

--Brian
blauther@SoundSoftware.cc

 

[notrut]

The P & D Wiz for VB will prompt the user on the target machine if the file is newer than the file you want to install.