Uninstalling libraries?

[lcifers]

This has happened to me several times. I write an application and then
test the installation by installing it on my development machine. I
find some bugs so I uninstall the application and start fixing them.
But alas! Some of the referenced libraries (for COM applications such
as Excel) have broken references. I remove the broken reference and
select "Add Reference" to re-add it. But it's not available in the list
of available COM libraries. So I browse to the location of the .dll or
..tlb file and add it manually.

But why do I lose these libraries when I uninstall the app? Perhaps
there is a better practice I should be using?

Thanks,

- Luther

 

[Cyril Gupta]

Hello Luther,

I suspect that this is a rather late reply, but better than never.

Every time you uninstall your application it removes the reference to these
libraries from the registry. To understand this phenomenon you have to learn
about the concept of shared libraries.

Your setup program thinks that the libraries you have installed are not
shared by other programs and only your program uses it and that's why it
uninstalls them when you remove the libraries.

To prevent this from happening you will have to mark these libraries as
shared. I recommend you read up a bit on making setups. Not long ago I wrote
an article on setup and deployment which might be an interesting starting
point. Here is the link

http://cyrilgupta.com/contentprog_setup.htm

Regards
Cyril Gupta