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installshield

Is it possible to have release specific support files in an InstallShield installation?


One of our partners/resellers is a device manufacturer who has a specific installer of our application that also installs utilities and drivers for their hardware. Up until now we had put the driver/utility into the "Support Files" section of InstallShield and launched the utility installer silently via installscript if the user entered a serial number that was specific to this partners edition of our application. The partner recently came to us with concerns about their licensing agreement, specifically we are not allowed to distribute their utility to users who are not their customers and simply including their installer with our installer (even if we don't run it) constitutes distribution. Is there any way to make sure that the support files for the partners utility is included only with their release of our application?


Solution

  • I think carefully controlling your source files' path variables will do the trick. You may not be able to remove all traces of their files, but by overriding where the path variable points at the release level, you can at least use an alternate set of empty files (with the same names) for all the other build configurations. Such empty files means you aren't distributing their code. So unless even the file names themselves are a problem, give this a try.

    (You didn't mention what version of InstallShield you're running, but I found equivalent documentation back through InstallShield 2014, the earliest I could find online. I think it's been around longer than that.)