.NET Framework deploy and the Setup and Deploy Projects

[Wilson Ricardo Passos Oliveira]

Hi fellows,


I have two simple questions regarding the Framework's deploy and the Setup
and Deploy Projects:

1. As I've read in another posts and newsgroups (and as I can imagine),
VS.NET IDE isn't capable of create a setup and deploy project and, in a
elegant way, during the setup process, detect the absence of the Framework.
In this case, I'd like to run the Dotnetredist.exe file, first, and the
SP2's NDP10_SP_Q321884_En.exe after that, silently... As I've noticed, the
only thing we have is Microsoft's Bootstrapper proposal, which can only run
the Dotnetredist.exe and that's all... Am I right, or do we have any other
elegant alternative to install the Framework and, better, the SP2 after
that?

2. I have an application which looks every time it's started for an XML
config file to capture the database's server name, login, password, etc. So,
when the application is installed, this file doesn't exist for the first
time, and the application will create it. But, when I uninstall the
application, all of the installed files are removed, but this config file
remains in the application's path. So, can we have some setup config
settings to remove everything, including those "new" files?

I'll really appreciate for any help.

Thanks,
Wilson.

 

[Phil Wilson]

A VS setup project that includes a .NET assembly will add a dependency on
the framework and a launch condition that you can edit - it's got a
supportedruntime property that's the framework version you want. You can
also use the MsiNetAssemblySupport property manually in a launch condition.
Detection that you've got 1.0 SP2 needs a launch condition of
MsiNetAssemblySupport > "1.0.3705.209".

To remove files you didn't install you'd need to use Orca, an MSI file
editor in the Platform SDK, to add the files to the RemoveFile table.

Launching an executable early in the install isn't supported in the IDE,
but you can add your own custom actions that launch an executable that runs
later in the install, and you could condition it on the property created by
that launch condition on the version of the framework, so you could launch
SP2 that way.

This will sound like gibberish if you're not used to setup projects and
Windows Installer, but it's the approach I'd use.